


Game of Stones

by Manny in Marvel Land (Manniness)



Series: A Hydra-made Former Assassin in Outer Space [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Battle Boyfriends, Because sometimes you gotta lose in order to win, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, M/M, No one is stupid or desperate enough to screw with time, Rocket POV, Snap OH SNAP, Somebody’s still gotta take one for the team, Somewhat canon-compliant, all the happy endings, badasses being badass, bucky pov, but there’s a happy ending anyway, lots of happy endings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 60,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manniness/pseuds/Manny%20in%20Marvel%20Land
Summary: As soon as Bucky hears about Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Stones, the Army sergeant in him is certain of two things: (1) fight -- because failure is NOT an option, and (2) plan for failure because it is the ONLY option.(Infinity War + Endgame with a Bucket twist because hell yeah Bucky should have played a bigger role, so this is that story.)Sequel to "The End of the Line" and "A Shot In The Dark"
Relationships: Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Gamora/Peter Quill, James "Bucky" Barnes/Rocket Raccoon, Mantis/Daniel Drumm, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: A Hydra-made Former Assassin in Outer Space [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839031
Comments: 134
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning of “The End of the Line,” I said it was unlikely that I would watch very many more of the Marvel movies. Well… I ended up watching pretty much all of them BECAUSE, as I was plotting out the first sequel (“A Shot in the Dark”), I realized that I already had the setup to do a Bucket version of Infinity War and Endgame. So from that point on, I needed a rewrite of the canon in order to improve the quality of my life.
> 
> The title is very much tongue-in-cheek, but it is also an unfortunately good fit for the story itself. Still, dick jokes and bad puns ahoy (especially in Rocket’s POV).
> 
> This story has zero time travel because, the older I get, the less fun and neat-o it is. Frankly, it gives me a headache trying to deal with the paradoxes that inevitably arise. So, in this fic -- no time travel (even though those movie scenes were quite amusing -- “That is America’s ass” -- and even satisfyingly cathartic -- FRIGGA!!!!).
> 
> Inspiration
> 
> (Fanvid) “Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier | I’m so sorry” posted by Alex Hedgehog Stan/Alex Hedgehog Snegir (Song: “I’m so sorry” by Imagine Dragons) at https://youtu.be/_7BEWkP7Gjg
> 
> (Music) “We Will Not Go Quietly” by Sixx:A.M.
> 
> (Music) “Sinners” by by Lauren Aquilina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: !!SEXYTIMES!!

“What are you and Rocket doing for your anniversary?” Gamora idly inquired, probably just to shuffle aside the silence on the bridge of the _Quadrant._

Bucky shook his head, grinning wryly. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I have prepared earplugs,” Mantis shared, and Bucky snorted.

“We’re not--” 

Drax mumbled, “They’ll probably be reaching for gold. It’s a metaphor.”

Quill rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘going for gold.’”

By now, Bucky knew he was blushing because he’d evidently been just a little too loud the other night when Rocket had rubbed and ridden against him for so long that Bucky had lost all patience with the delay and snapped: “The hell, Rocket -- are you going for gold!?”

Give or take a few expletives.

This was not how he’d wanted to learn that their quarters were not, in fact, completely soundproof after all. Somebody really should have said something before now. Long before now.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Sorry about the noise.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Quill singsonged.

Gamora hurriedly assured Bucky, “Don’t be sorry. You guys are in love. It’s beautiful.”

“It just gets a little distracting sometimes,” Mantis said and ended up on the receiving end of a stern look from Gamora.

Quill shook his head. “Damn, y’know, I still can’t wrap my head around how you two can be making this work.” Before Bucky could refuse to volunteer details, Quill added, “He’s not the easiest person to get along with. And you two share a room.”

Actually, sharing a room with Rocket was easy. They were both neat (by nature if not by training). There was plenty of storage space for their few personal belongings. Rocket kept his inventions, tools, spare parts, and bombs-in-progress in his workshop. The completed and assembled weapons were stored in the _Quadrant’s_ armory or within various cabinets of convenience throughout the ship. (Those were labeled: “Help yourself -- at your own risk.”) Recently, Rocket had been urging Bucky to claim Gamora’s long-vacated cabin and get himself a hobby to fill it up with: _“There’s gotta be something you wanna get back into.”_

 _“Besides bed -- with you?”_ Bucky had teased.

The only thing that Bucky really had to watch out for was the shed fur. But since that annoyed Rocket even more than it did Bucky, it was hardly ever an issue they disagreed on.

Bucky lifted his left wrist and flicked his cuff back, showing off the wristwatch Rocket had given him. “If we’re counting from the day Rocket gave me this, it still hasn’t been two years.”

“How about since the first time you guys made whoopee?” Quill asked just as Drax griped, “You are counting in Earth years.”

“How old am I in Earth years?” Mantis begged enthusiastically.

Squinting, Bucky guestimated: “Twenty-four.”

She looked horrified. “So old!”

And Bucky laughed. Had to. Because he’d just turned one-hundred and one according to the Terran calendar. As Steve had recently and thoughtfully reminded him.

“Has anyone heard from Nebula lately?” Gamora asked suddenly.

“Why--she supposed to be here making balloon animals at dinner tonight?” Bucky had crossed paths with Gamora’s angry, blue, bionic sister several times. At least once per short and (seemingly) pointless visit. They’d only ever had one conversation of any length.

> Entering the _Quadrant’s_ galley as Bucky had been making java for himself and Rocket, Nebula’s black eyes had focused on his bared left arm.
> 
> “Is that Terran-made?”
> 
> “Nope,” Bucky had answered. “Rocket-made.”
> 
> “And it turned out pretty good,” Rocket had touted, stroking a paw down the arm in question, “if I do say so myself.”
> 
> Nebula had ignored him. “You asked Rocket to make you an arm?”
> 
> Bucky corrected her: “I dared him to.”
> 
> “Don’t get any funny ideas about free labor,” Rocket had preemptively declared to Nebula who was now looking at him intently. “Bucky pays for it by being my obedient love slave.”
> 
> “Like that’s a hardship,” Bucky had muttered into the java steam before taking a sip.
> 
> Nebula had continued staring at them. “You two?”
> 
> Rocket had given her a cocky smile, slinging his arm around Bucky’s shoulder.
> 
> Bucky prompted: “Live together? Call each other pet names? Finish each other’s sentences?”
> 
> “The answer to all of those,” Rocket had solemnly intoned, “would be yes.”
> 
> Nebula had blinked and muttered, “First, Gamora with that fleshy, blonde squeak-toy and now this--”
> 
> “Uh, technically,” Rocket interrupted, “Bucky and I got it together before they did.”
> 
> Nebula spun on her heel and marched toward the galley exit. “I really need to get off of this ship.” The rest of her words had been muffled by distance and a wall, but Rocket adamantly insisted she’d said, “Before I end up climbing that damn tree.”

And given Groot’s very pubescent mood swings, Bucky was glad Nebula hadn’t stuck around. It was even odds on whether Groot actually would have set down his video game console and tried to make a move or simply glared in mute refusal. Thank God Nebula had been speaking sarcastically.

Mantis frowned. “What are balloon animals?”

Quill barked out a laugh. “YES. Nebula making balloon animals. That would be awesome.”

“What would be awesome,” Gamora mused as she scanned the communications backlog, “is you surviving asking her.”

Drax said, “She always says no to Quill.”

Bucky smirked. “Pretty sure she’ll be saying no to the balloon animals with my old left arm shoved up your ass. So good luck.”

“Ew.” Mantis grimaced.

Bucky shrugged. “Rocket says it looks like one of Drax’s turds.”

“An unflattering likeness,” Drax reported. Bucky didn’t ask which was which.

Gamora huffed at the comms log. “Nothing recent.” She asked Mantis, “When was the last time you pinged Nebula’s ship?”

“Don’t do that,” Quill said, holding up a hand and leaving poor Mantis with her mouth hanging open. “No pinging. When you ping someone, we get pinged back. We’re in stealth mode.” 

“We are?” Mantis asked.

Drax hummed. “Stealth mode is my favorite.”

“No, it’s not.” Bucky reminded him: “Your favorite is ‘roaring battle cry of imminent victory.’”

“Stealth mode is my second favorite.”

Gamora asked Quill, “Why are we in stealth mode?”

“Because it’s Bucky and Rocket’s two-year whoopee anniversary! You don’t want anything interrupting their big night, do ya?”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “But you would.”

“That’s true. I would,” Quill admitted easily. “But I’m not going to because Gamora’s been looking forward to this for ages, so.”

Gamora whipped around. Blurted, “I have not.”

Quill waggled his brows. “Have, too.”

Bucky exhaled and endeavored to get through the systems maintenance procedure that he was currently running (and it was the only task that was keeping his ass in his seat on the bridge). After this, he was off-duty and meeting Rocket in the galley for dinner where Bucky had been instructed to announce himself before entering because--

 _“I’ll be cooking with the old hazmat gear on,”_ Rocket had warned him. It was the only way to keep the fur contributions to a minimum. _“And if that ain’t a mood-killer, I dunno know what is.”_

So Bucky had gallantly agreed to spare Rocket’s pride. A sulking Rocket was only cute for the first ten seconds and today was a special occasion. So, OK maybe Bucky hadn’t planned anything particularly “special” for tonight, but he was very much aware of the passing of time. He’d been flabbergasted the last time this date had rolled around, amazed that he and Rocket had been together for a whole year, but now he was more than that: Bucky was pretty gosh darn proud of himself for soaring right through a second. Well, he was proud of both of them because Rocket was in this, too, caveman tendencies and all.

> “It gets the better of me sometimes,” Rocket had apologized after getting both of them kicked out of a bar because the sight of the waitress flirting with Bucky had been too much for Rocket to take. Bucky had sat him down on a quiet rooftop of the space station for a talk and, wonder of wonders, Rocket had talked: “And I hate that it gets away from me.”
> 
> Bucky had scooted a little closer, reaching around and rubbing Rocket’s arm. “I know what that feels like.”
> 
> “Yeah, you do.” Rocket had tilted his brow against Bucky’s chest on a sigh. “I wanna be better than this, but it ain’t easy.”
> 
> Bucky had agreed: “It’s not.”
> 
> “And when it happens, it pisses me off ‘cause--” Rocket had leaned back and cupped Bucky’s jaw in his paws. “--I just wanna take ya out, make ya smile.”
> 
> Bucky had smiled then, slow and lopsided and warm. “This smile?” he’d checked.
> 
> “Yeah, that’s a good one,” Rocket had approved and leaned in, rubbing his muzzle against the side of Bucky’s neck.

They hadn’t made it to the next bar. But Bucky didn’t have any regrets. Making out on rooftops was better than overpriced drinks in a noisy pub any day.

_Beep--beep!_

Bucky blinked, glancing at the terminal screen.

SYSTEM ANOMALIES DETECTED: 0

Thank God.

“Systems are good,” Bucky reported, shouting across an argument between Drax and Quill over the relevancy of some idiom or other that Gamora was explaining badly to Mantis. Bucky didn’t volunteer to either clear up the confusion or referee the discussion. If the four of them were busy squabbling in the _Quadrant’s_ cockpit, then they wouldn’t be intruding on Bucky and Rocket in the galley.

Duties discharged, Bucky swung out of the seat and headed out, down one level and along the corridor. As he neared the galley, Bucky slowed his steps.

“Rocket? This is your proximity warning!”

He paused just beside the door, but only silence answered him back. Frowning, he peered around the archway. The room was deserted. The dishwasher was running.

“Huh.” Rocket had to be back in their rooms then. Bucky pivoted and headed down to the next junction and took a left. Up ahead, he could see the door to their quarters cracked open and light spilling out into the corridor.

Bucky hadn’t made anybody a promise to announce himself outside of this room, so he quietly sidled up to it, toeing the door open a few more inches and peeking inside.

Nobody was in the front room. Beyond the screen that shielded their bed from view, all was dark. But the door to Rocket’s workroom was open.

Bucky inched closer until he could look in and found Groot sitting beside Rocket at one of the room’s long tables with both of their backs to the doorway.

“Hm, yeah, see here?” Rocket mumbled at something in his paws. Groot was bracing his elbows on the tabletop, chin propped up on his fists. He looked moderately interested in what Rocket was doing and that surprised Bucky. Recently, Groot hadn’t bothered to give anyone the time day.

“Yeah,” Rocket was saying as he poked and prodded whatever device he had in his paws. “OK, you’re all set. A hundred new levels.”

Bucky rolled his eyes as Rocket handed over the game controller. Groot smiled. “I am _Groot,”_ he boasted with enthusiasm.

“Yeah, well, remember your promise: turn it off when we tell you to. Or else.”

“I am Groot,” Groot absently murmured as he thumbed the controls and out came the static-overlaid sounds of tiny laser blasts and enemy ship explosions. He didn’t even look up as he passed Bucky and scuffed his way toward the exit, eyes glued to the screen and shoulders hunched, not bothering to shut the door behind him.

“Bye, Groot!” Bucky shouted after him, closing the door himself and locking it. He quirked a brow at Rocket who was looking adorably apologetic in the doorway of his workroom. “One hundred more levels? Was that really necessary?”

Rocket whined out a sigh. “Probably not. But he showed up in the galley and helped me put our dinner together and he _talked to me.”_

“Wow. That devious little dillweed.”

“I know!” Rocket hung his head, which pretty much guaranteed that Bucky would close the distance between them and kneel down so that Rocket could lean on him. Bucky let him, stroking Rocket’s back and massaging his nape.

Quietly, Bucky said, “I know you miss him.”

Rocket nodded.

“Are we still operating under the assumption that all that sea salt is keeping him from growing out of it?”

“I dunno what else it could be.”

“Too bad we haven’t got any of that Ravager moonshine.” It was their working theory that there was something in certain alcoholic beverages that caused Groot to not just speed up but age up. Something that acted like fertilizer. How else could Groot have grown from the size of Drax’s hand to a seven-foot-tall commando in (what Bucky figured to be about) two Terran years? And, by all accounts, Groot had been his usual sweet self during that entire time. Not this salty little shithead of a teenager.

Well, it was a puzzle they wouldn’t be solving tonight.

Bucky tucked his chin down and nuzzled Rocket’s ear. “Something smells good.”

“That would be you.”

“That would be dinner.” He’d seen the covered tray on the table in the main living space. “What do I gotta do to get you to share some of that with me?”

Rocket snickered and braced himself away from Bucky’s chest on strong arms. “Oh, boy. Don’t know if you can afford my asking price.”

Bucky’s brows lifted as Rocket’s pelvis canted against Bucky’s navel. It appeared that celebrations were already underway in those overalls. “Is that so?” he murmured through a teasing smile. Bucky’s right hand slid down and around and up between Rocket’s legs. “I’m hoping to dicker… if you’re open to that.”

“So open,” Rocket warbled, giving up on the pretense altogether. He clawed at Bucky’s shoulders. “Wide, wide open.”

Bucky groaned against Rocket’s furry cheek. “Dinner can wait?”

“It’s gonna have to.” Because Rocket sure couldn’t. Never had and probably never would. There was no such thing as a slow burn for Bucky’s mate. When he was turned on, it was full-throttle. Every time.

And as turned on as Bucky was, it was still easier for him to put his own arousal on the back burner (which he now did) and work Rocket until he was a sobbing mess, leaning back on Bucky’s raised knees, his legs spread over Bucky’s hips as Bucky’s hands massaged and coaxed him through an intense climax. Slowly, slowly. Yeah, Bucky knew how to draw it out, how to make sure Rocket was delirious with pleasure, but he also knew how to keep Rocket’s pulse slow and steady because once or twice he’d been overwhelmed to the point of fearing a heart attack.

Trial and error. This was how they’d figured out how to take care of each other, how they’d learned to--

_BEEP--BEEP!_

The infrequently used emergency channel.

“Sonuvabitch,” Rocket gasped out.

Jaw clenched, Bucky unhappily glanced at the comms station beside the bed. It was Quill calling (of course it was) and it was tagged as urgently URGENT. He was going to have to take the call. Damn it.

Bucky shushed Rocket, “You just keep doing what you’re doing, tiger. Wanna watch you while I handle this.”

“You--oh, God--you--?”

“I’ve gotcha,” Bucky promised. “Shh.” Then he cleared his throat and cued the comms: “Accept call, audio only. Open line. QUILL, WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY?”

Rocket’s muzzle scrunched and his fangs flashed at Bucky’s rough snarl.

“SORRY--SHIP’S BROKE. GONNA EXPLODE,” Quill panicked.

“What exactly,” Bucky growled, watching Rocket’s reaction as his spine bowed and hips swiveled just a little harder, “is telling you that?”

“Uh, the port thruster gauge. Engine three.”

“Switch to manual override on all port thrusters,” Bucky paused a moment so that Quill could do that. “Then find the console power source button. The yellow one. Press it and keep pressing it for seven seconds.”

“What’s this gonna do?”

“Reset the gauges.”

Rocket licked his chops at Bucky’s authoritative tone.

“But the engine--”

“Yeah. But the gauges have been acting screwy. If it were the engine, we’d be missing half the ship by now.” Rocket reached back. His claws scraped over the backs of Bucky’s thighs and Bucky’s hips rolled, rubbing his heavy length against the underside of Rocket’s.

“Oh. Right. OK. Now what?”

“Now,” Bucky directed, setting a new rhythm for Rocket to ride, “power down those engines and start everything up again.”

“Got it… YEAH! GOT IT! Everything looks good so--wait a minute. How do you even know to do this?”

“Because when Rocket talks--” Bucky gave a gentle squeeze to the throbbing cock in his slick grasp. “--I actually listen. Unlike others who shall remain nameless.”

“HEY! I LISTEN--!”

“Goodbye,” Bucky said, terminating the call. “Comms: mute microphone.” The corresponding light blinked on and Bucky eyed Rocket hungrily. “All clear, tiger,” Bucky rumbled low in his chest. “You got something you wanna tell me?”

Rocket moaned. “I frickin’ love you.” 

“I know you do.”

“You--oh, God--take such frickin’ good care of me.”

Bucky grinned because hell yeah that had come out as a thready whine. “You know how much I love it.”

Rocket snarled through his gritted teeth, fangs gleaming and pricked-up ears tilting back. His snout lifted up and Bucky read the signs of Rocket’s impending finish.

“That’s it, tiger. Ride it out for me. Gimme just a little more.”

“Arrgh!” Rocket mewled as his slick release pulsed once and then abated. He collapsed back against Bucky’s thighs and Bucky stilled, watching and waiting for Rocket to catch his breath.

It didn’t take long -- Bucky had been careful not to push Rocket’s heart rate up too far. It was a delicate balance that had taken a lot of practice to perfect. And now he was reaping the rewards because as soon as Rocket recovered, he was arching over Bucky, paws dragging through the hot come painting Bucky’s tingling skin, and then sliding both dexterous hands over Bucky’s straining arousal.

And then Bucky’s spine bowed and his head pressed back into the pillows and he let Rocket take care of him.

And God he was so good at it.

The pleasure was indescribable and the explosion, when it washed over and through and out of his very skin, was cosmic. Rocket’s self-satisfied grin (when Bucky finally managed to open his eyes) was a gorgeous sight.

“Lookit you sittin’ all smug with that smile,” Bucky rasped, idly massaging Rocket’s feet.

“Hm. I got cause.”

“Oh?” He continued on a lazy slur, “What’d you do that you think’s so great?”

Rocket leaned in and a nipped at Bucky’s jaw, squiggled his snout against Bucky’s beard, and growled, “Just gave you a demonstration. How could you’a missed it?”

“What you talkin’ about? I miss it already.” He gave Rocket a slow grin of invitation because hell yes, he was angling for an encore.

“Then I guess we’d better work on your aim, bright eyes.”

And, after quick showers and a meal of reheated Krylorian curry in the front room, that was exactly what they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully support the idea of couples have individual hobbies. It was my experience, however, that for the first few years of cohabitation I didn’t do my usual hobbies at all. Maybe because my headspace was full with other Real Life things that I wanted to focus on. So don’t think Bucky’s being weak-minded here in being so into spending time with Rocket; he’s just so happy that he can’t help it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely people who took the time to comment at me in the previous chapter! I was motivated to prep this one for posting a whole day ahead of my weekly update goal. Whoo-hoo!! (^_^)

The _Quadrant_ was practically roomy compared to the _Milano,_ but there still wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to do on it other than maintenance chores, which was why Quill tended to accept every job offer that came their way whether Gamora approved or not. Bucky suspected it was a win-win for Quill: either he’d be taking names and kicking ass or he’d be squabbling with his lover until Gamora hauled him into their shared quarters to drill some sense into him. Either way, he’d be seeing action of some kind.

Both Drax and Groot seemed to appreciate having the added space aboard. Bucky could often find Drax dozing in a cockpit seat, surrounded by blinking lights and humming machinery. Maybe it was soothing -- white noise that pushed back the shadowy memories lurking in the corners of his room. And Groot lounged wherever he felt like it, tangling his vines around catwalks in the docking bay or even chilling out in a deactivated first-aid pod. If Groot was a typical example of his species, then teenage Flora colossus were moody jerks, that was for sure.

But as for Bucky and Mantis, sometimes the _Quadrant_ was too large, which was why they had a… well, “arrangement” might be the best word for it. Anytime either of them needed to sit with a friend (either in silence or not), they’d go to the galley and get set to brew up two cups of java, then send a non-urgent ping to the other’s comms device. Bucky’s watch sounded just as he was making up the bed with fresh linens and ignoring the way Rocket was carefully folding up the used ones. For the sake of their anniversary, he wasn’t gonna try to talk his mate out of keeping them. They’d pick up a new set at their next stop in civilization so that no one was left “short-sheeted.”

“That Mantis?” Rocket asked, still seemingly focused on his task.

Bucky was sure it was, but he checked anyway. “Yeah. You wanna have some java with us?”

“Sure. Been a while since I’ve tuned in to what the antennae are picking up.”

Bucky bumped Rocket’s shoulder before murmuring a quick reply: “Java for three, ladybug.” Lowering his wrist, Bucky met Rocket’s somber gaze, but didn’t scold him for his callous words. Bucky knew Rocket talked tough because, deep down, he was terrified. Not of Mantis, no, but of the future and what it might hold in store.

They finished straightening up and Bucky collected the previous night’s dinner tray. Rocket held the door open and they tromped down the corridor and around to the galley.

Mantis was just setting three steaming cups of java on the table as they crossed the threshold. Rocket gave her arm a pat in passing and went to go scrounge up something for his and Bucky’s breakfast.

Bucky sat down with Mantis on his right, close enough for her to take his hand or lower her head to his shoulder. Bucky knew Rocket still didn’t like it even though Mantis had zero interest in Bucky romantically (or sexually), but he wrestled back his jealousy because he owed her. Both he and Bucky did. Not just for helping Bucky gain control over the Winter Soldier (and figure out how to get through self-activation without injury) but because she’d nudged them through the pain of their pasts. Sitting together, talking -- sometimes just that was harder than fighting for their lives in an actual battle, but Rocket had shared his earliest memories of the lab, his fellow subjects, his harrowing escape. And Bucky had faced down Hydra, had grieved for the lives he’d taken and the years he’d spent lost and adrift.

Mantis had been there, offering a gentle nudge or wise words, so when she needed someone to listen, Bucky was there for her. Rocket, too, more times than not. Because they honestly might not have made it this far without her.

“Hey, ladybug,” Bucky greeted quietly as the silence dragged on.

She exhaled and let her head drift to his shoulder. “Brother Bucky. Friend Rocket.”

Bucky curled his right arm around her shoulders and, rubbing her arm, said, “Another dream?”

She nodded her cheek against his shirt. “I miss him.”

Him. Daniel Drumm. The son of a bitch who’d charmed Mantis into falling in love with him right before he’d up and died on her.

Bucky spied the sour grimace on Rocket’s face and silently concurred. Even though it’d been months and months ago, the memory still left a bad taste in Bucky’s mouth: the face on the comms screen -- a distinguished and well-groomed man calmly informing them that Master Daniel Drumm had been killed defending the New York Sanctum, and that the person they were now speaking to was his successor.

 _“Were you the one who killed him?”_ Bucky had snapped, already distraught at hearing Mantis’ wail of denial; he’d sprinted straight from the galley to the comms hub, Rocket and Gamora hot on his heels, fearing an invasion of God-knows-what.

 _“No,”_ that Doctor Strange asshole had drawled, _“although I was too late to save him.”_

 _“Then we’ll happily put that on you, pal,”_ Rocket had said with arms crossed over his chest, glaring in response to the long look he’d been getting from the stone-faced sorcerer. Bucky had gathered Mantis into his arms as Gamora had braced herself over the comms transmitter and barked question after question until Bucky had demanded confirmation from Master Hamir himself.

The man still hadn’t deigned to utter a single word, but he’d responded just fine to yes or no questions.

They’d gotten their confirmation, but it hadn’t changed the facts. Daniel Drumm was gone.

Only, he wasn’t.

“Another frickin’ dream,” Rocket muttered as he returned to the table with a plate of dried fruit and vegetables and roasted nuts. It was hardly the breakfast of champions, but they’d make up for it at lunchtime.

Levering himself up into the seat on Bucky’s left, he asked, “You and Danny Boy hold hands in this one?”

There were times when Bucky wanted to strangle him. Instead, he lightly backhanded Rocket’s shoulder.

“What?” Rocket protested to Bucky’s stern glare. “I ain’t crass enough to ask if they made out.”

“You kind of just did.”

“No. Check your ears -- that was not a question. My _question_ was about hand-holding.”

“We did hold hands,” Mantis quietly confessed, “and that was nice.”

Bucky heard a “but,” and coaxed, “But it was like the others?” The other dreams in which Drumm insisted on continuing Mantis’ education in the Mystic Arts. Sometimes it was a lesson in Sanskrit and sometimes it was, say, a demonstration on shielding. The first time Mantis had summoned a pair of glowing energy discs, one on each hand, Bucky had almost choked on his own shock because how could she be learning actual skills if her dream-visitor wasn’t an actual sorcerer? He couldn’t be Daniel Drumm, though -- the man was dead. And it drove Bucky insane knowing some scheming shithead was waltzing in and out of Mantis’ mind, impersonating someone she trusted, on a regular basis. He’d sent an irrate note to Hamir who had written back insisting that Mantis was safe, but Bucky didn’t have proof of that and his big brother instincts were chafing hard.

Mantis nodded. “It was very much like the other dreams.”

“What’d you learn this time?” Rocket asked into his mug, voice echoing slightly against the curved metal.

Mantis hesitated.

Bucky patted her arm. “Would it be easier to show us?”

She said that it would be, so they abandoned their cups and followed her to her quarters. Her room was smaller than theirs, with her bed in plain view, so Bucky hung back on the threshold and Rocket kept to his side, looping an arm around Bucky’s leg.

They watched as Mantis stood in the center of the room, pivoted smartly to the right, squared her shoulders and raised her hand. Pinching the air at an odd angle, she rotated her wrist and--

The Tomb of Ra fell into her hands.

But this wasn’t anything new. Drumm had taught her how to enclose objects in mirror dimensions before he’d died.

This wasn’t even the first time Bucky had seen her retrieve it. Apparently, it was written in Sanskrit -- a language shared by both the ancient people of Earth and the ancestors of the Lem -- and since “Drumm” was still teaching Mantis the language, Bucky assumed that Mantis was still working on deciphering the text.

He didn’t ask if she’d made any progress on translating it. Gamora had eventually tracked down half a dozen historical references to the Tome of Ra, none of them happy stories:

 _“Each time this book surfaces, there’s war. Horrible destruction,”_ Gamora had said, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of keeping the tome on board.

But who could they give it to? An artifact of this much power could and would corrupt those with the skill to use it; it was obvious to Bucky. They had to keep it out of the hands of both the Lem and the Masters of the Mystic Arts. But they still hadn’t found a good place to stash it for safekeeping. So here it was, tucked into a mirror dimension in Mantis’ room.

 _“It will be safe here,”_ she’d explained back when she’d first managed to cast the spell. _“Only I can retrieve it.”_

 _“And if something happens to you,”_ Quill had asked worriedly, _“will it just fall out of thin air?”_

_“No. It is a simple spell but very powerful. The tome will stay hidden.”_

Which could lead to a whole slew of other problems.

Now, Mantis gestured them closer. Bucky stepped over and let Mantis coach him into place. “What are we doing here?” he asked.

“You will help me put it back in its hiding place.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded and directed him to raise his right arm and hold out his hand. Hers hovered beside his. Her antennae flexed and illuminated. Suddenly, tiny tendrils of fiery energy were sparking between their skin, miniature lighting racing over the back of Bucky’s hand and across the palm of hers. Like one of those Tesla coils.

“Good,” Mantis approved. “Now flick--”

With a twist of Bucky’s wrist, the tome vanished. He dropped his arm and moved back.

“Yeah, that’s a nice trick,” Rocket critiqued as he leaned in the doorway, playing it cool, “but we all know you’re the one really doin’ the work, lady.”

“The work is not done, crabby puppy,” she quietly chided. Taking a step back, she told Bucky, “Now retrieve it. Try.”

Shuffling a bit, he noticed how there seemed to be an energy in the room. He shifted his feet until he was standing precisely where he had been before; he could feel it. Something resonated in silent harmony in his body. He lifted his arm exactly as he’d just done and then, pinching the air as he’d seen Mantis do, he rotated his wrist in a counter gesture.

The tome appeared in his hand.

Rocket’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”

Brows arched, Bucky looked to Mantis for an explanation. She gave it: “You have been keyed in to my spell. You can unlock it or--” She nodded for him to go ahead. “--lock it back up. Try now.”

He flicked his wrist and the tome disappeared.

“Damn,” Rocket murmured, still impressed.

Mantis turned to him next. “Would you like to try?”

“Would I like to--what kind of question is that?” Rocket blustered, grabbing the chair at Mantis’ vanity and hauling it over to where Bucky was standing.

Surrendering his spot, Bucky kept watch in the doorway as Mantis went through the same steps she’d taken with Bucky, showing Rocket the ropes of magical dimensions. Of all the things Bucky could have foreseen popping up on the day’s itinerary, this had definitely not been one of them.

And he had to laugh at Rocket’s toothy grin of accomplishment as he locked up and unlocked the tome over and over again, his tail swishing with enthusiasm and ears pointing to the ceiling.

“Y’know, ya might wanna take those sorcerers up on their invitation, bright eyes.”

Bucky mused with a wry grin, “So that I can share my notes with you?”

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t tell me this ain’t cool as hell.”

It was cool. However, it was also incomprehensible. Generally, Bucky steered clear of that kind of thing. So he said, “We’ll see,” and figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it some thought before their third anniversary.

“GUYS?” Quill’s voice sounded from their communicators. “PICKING UP A DISTRESS SIGNAL AND WE ARE ANSWERING IT.”

Bucky replied. “Rocket, Mantis, and I are on our way up.”

“A distress call,” Rocket sneered, tucking the tome back in its hiding place with a flick of his wrist. He leaped down from the chair. “What’s so special about a distress call?”

Mantis told him, “Someone may be in distress.”

“This is what we do,” Bucky reminded Rocket, amused by his petulance. He really hadn’t been ready to stop playing with his new toy.

Mantis closed the door behind them and followed Bucky and Rocket to the bridge.

Rocket protested, “What we do is save the galaxy, not idiots that the galaxy would be better off without.”

“We won’t know what kind of idiots they are if we don’t answer their distress call,” Bucky pointed out.

Rocket huffed. “Why you gotta be logical? It’s frickin’ annoying.”

Bucky grinned. Rocket could protest all he liked, but Bucky heard the truth tucked in between the words. He heard respect and admiration because even after two years, Rocket still thought Bucky was smart. Smart enough to walk away from Hydra. Smart enough to adapt to life in space. Smart enough to entrust with Rocket’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “short-sheeted” is an old practical joke that (maybe) originated in the military. It’s when a bed looks like it’s been made up nicely but, when you pull back the blanket, you find that the top sheet has been folded in half across the middle (so you’ve got to tuck the bottom down around the end of the mattress before you can climb in). Bucky uses it as a pun here.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky marveled in silence: one minute, they had been approaching the coordinates of the distress call and Groot was sassing Quill, who had told him to put that damn video game away, and Bucky was making a mental note to have a few stern words with Groot later because you did NOT talk that way to people who genuinely cared about your well-being (and God that needful scolding -- it was like hearing the ghost of Bucky’s old man inside his head), and the next minute they were peeling a pirate-angel named Thor off of the bridge windows.

 _“Gotta install some wipers,”_ Rocket had muttered to Bucky before leaning in to give their unconscious passenger a cautious sniff.

 _“Do I have competition?”_ Bucky had teased and Rocket had scoffed.

_“Don’t be an idiot.”_

_Don’t be an idiot._

Bucky watched the scene play out as a now very much conscious Thor rambled about Infinity Stones and Thanos and the Earth’s Avengers while helping himself to whatever he liked aboard the _Quadrant_ (including pre-packaged food and the scouter pod). Bucky kept his distance, stolidly clinging to objectivity because Bucky was not an idiot and if the situation were as dire as it sounded, then he certainly couldn’t afford to act like one.

“Where we have to go,” Thor insisted, “is Nidavellir.”

Drax lobbed an accusation: “That’s a made-up word.”

“All words are made up,” Thor argued back.

And Rocket was so intensely interested in Thor’s choice of destination that, under any other circumstances, Bucky would have been teasing him mercilessly. “Nidavellir is real? Seriously? That place is a legend!” Rocket gestured grandly. “They make the most powerful, horrific weapons to ever torment the universe.” He chortled and Thor beamed at having found a kindred spirit. Rocket said, “I would very much like to go there, please.”

Of all the times for Rocket to remember the magic words.

Thor replied, “The rabbit is correct and clearly the smartest among you.”

“Rabbit?” Rocket muttered, glancing at Bucky who refused to give him any input on it at all because, a moment ago, Rocket had practically been on the verge of hopping up and down with excitement. Definitely “rabbit.”

Thor blathered on about Nidavellir being the only place to find the weapon he needed, and Bucky’s gaze slid toward Gamora, half-hidden in shadows where she thought no one could see the terror tightening her throat or the fear pinching her brow. No, Bucky hadn’t missed the way she’d stiffened when Thor had mentioned the lost Soul Stone.

Perhaps it was not so lost at all.

As Bucky’s mind raced with contingencies, Quill, meanwhile, was letting his ego run roughshod over common sense: “Look, this is my ship and I’m not going to--wait, what kind of weapon are we talking about here?”

Thor answered, “The Thanos-killing kind.”

“Don’t you think that we should all have a weapon like that?” Quill challenged, and Bucky had to admit it was tempting.

“No.” Thor bluntly explained, “You simply lack the strength to wield them. Your bodies would crumble as your minds collapsed into madness.”

Rocket turned to Bucky. “Is it weird that I wanna do it even more now?”

Thor hummed. “Hm, a little bit, yeah.”

But Rocket hadn’t been talking to him and so Bucky ignored the remark, answering, “Not at all.” He gave Rocket a smirk and he knew there was a sparkle in his eyes that was mirrored in Rocket’s.

Gamora spoke up. “If we don’t go to Knowhere and Thanos retrieves another stone, he’ll be too powerful to stop.”

“He already is,” Thor reported flatly, and that right there killed any possibility of Bucky joining the epic quest to a dying neutron star and a weapons forge of legend. If a supposed god of Asgard -- a man who could wield lightning with only the power of his will -- viewed the hunt for the Infinity Stones as a lost cause, then there was really only one option left: damage control.

“I got it figured out,” Rocket announced. “We got two scouter ships and a large assortment of morons. So me, Bucky, and Groot will go with the pirate-angel here. And the morons will go to Knowhere to try and stop Thanos. Cool? Cool.”

Thor approved happily: “So cool.”

Quill sucked in a breath, staring hard at Rocket, but Bucky wedged himself between them before accusations could fly.

Oblivious to the byplay, Rocket called out, “C’mon, Groot. Put that game down. You’ll rot your brain.”

Bucky waited for Groot to shuffle past, eyes still glued the game console in his grasp, before he announced his own decision. “I’m staying here,” he told Rocket, his tone quiet but firm. 

One foot poised to enter the pod, Rocket froze. He turned around. “What.”

Bucky shrugged. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on the morons.”

“No.” Rocket scampered over to the table and jumped up onto it -- rules about feet on top of potential eating surfaces be damned. “No, we’ve discussed this. We go together or…”

Or not at all.

Bucky framed Rocket’s face in his hands. God, how had the day spiraled to shit so fast?

From inside the pod, the sounds of Groot’s game peppered the silence. Bucky could practically feel Thor’s wide-eyed gawping. He didn’t care. He tilted his brow against Rocket’s. “Get the pirate-angel his epic weapon. I’ll meet you on the battlefield.”

“Bucky--” Rocket’s claws combed through Bucky’s shoulder-length hair.

Angling his jaw to speak directly into Rocket’s ear, he whispered, “Now hurry it up or I won’t leave you any assholes to shoot.”

“I… No, I--”

Leaning back far enough to look into Rocket’s eyes, Bucky told him, “You need to do this. You’re on offense, tiger.”

“And you’re on defense,” Rocket realized, looking crestfallen.

“After this is all over, you can buy me a drink and tell me all about it.”

Rocket griped: “A drink that won’t even get you drunk.”

“I’ll be sober and all the more riveted for it.” 

With a warbling sigh, Rocket muttered, “I don’t like this. Every time we split up…”

“That was a couple of years ago,” Bucky reminded him.

“Yeah, well, near-death experiences tend to stick with me.”

Bucky had no counter to that except to say this was the way it had to be because Bucky wasn’t needed on Nidavellir, and he had the feeling that a trip to Knowhere would end very badly. So he said nothing.

Instead, he ducked down and pressed his lips to Rocket’s muzzle. Tears prickling against the backs of his eyes as Rocket returned the gentle nuzzle, licked slowly at Bucky’s lower lip, and, carefully biting down, sucked the flesh between his fangs.

It still almost cut Bucky’s knees out from under him.

He massaged the base of those scoop-shaped ears until Thor loudly cleared his throat once, twice, and Rocket finally deigned to end the kiss. “On the battlefield?” he checked.

“You can count on it, tiger.”

“Oh, I am, bright eyes.” And then, with a quick nip to Bucky’s jaw, Rocket dashed off of the tabletop and into the pod. Slammed the canopy down and triggered the launch sequence. Bucky watched with his jaw clenched, his gaze skipping from Groot’s bowed head to Thor’s puzzled expression, and at the last moment, his gaze locked with Rocket’s--

The pod dropped out of sight with a _whoosh!_

Bucky’s heart tumbled into his belly. His now-hollow chest ached.

Quill’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Not that I don’t appreciate the show of support, but what the hell, dude?” 

Turning to look at Gamora, Bucky said, “There’s no point in setting course for Knowhere. The third stone is long gone.”

“What makes you think Thanos knows it’s there?”

“Because everything I’ve heard about the Collector tells me he’s an idiot.” Bucky reminded Quill, “You said the Ravagers negotiated with someone on Xandar for the orb.”

Quill grumpily added, “But he was just a middleman.”

To Gamora, Bucky said, “I’d bet that the Xandarian was going to sell it to your buyer -- the Collector. And how did you find out he was interested in the orb? A bid on the open market? A bounty?”

Gamora crossed her arms. “He advertised.”

Quill huffed. “And if he was interested in one stone, then it’s not that much of a stretch to figure he’s trying to get his hands on all of them.”

Bucky pointed out, “And besides, what good is having a collection if you never show it off?”

Gamora shook her head in disgust. “Thanos probably knew he had the Reality Stone days after the Collector got it.” 

Quill scowled. “He’s just been letting him hold onto it until he was ready to use it.”

“While we’ve been here--” Bucky nodded at the debris of the _Statesman_ that could be seen through the bridge windows. “--Thanos has been to Knowhere. He’s got three of the stones by now.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” Gamora pressed.

Bucky laid it out with precision: “We’ve just heard from someone who can survive having his ship blown up around him and left floating in space that Thanos is unstoppable with only two of those Infinity Stones. Even if by some miracle we get there first, even if we find the third stone--” Bucky shook his head. “It’ll only paint a target on us. And something tells me the Hadron Enforcer isn’t gonna be enough to get the job done.”

“It wasn’t against Ronan,” Quill admitted, and Bucky assumed that Ronan hadn’t been nearly as formidable as Thanos was now.

“If we were looking to trap Thanos, then yeah, going to Knowhere would be the play to make. But we can’t -- not with what we got to work with.” Bucky moved past Gamora and called up the comms system.

Drax, who had looked to be dozing during both the farewells and discussion, now took a mighty stand. “If Knowhere is where Thanos will be, then I would face him there.”

Bucky looked at Gamora before answering Drax. “We’ll face him regardless. Don’t worry, Drax.”

“Who’re you calling?” Quill asked as Bucky finished dialing a familiar number.

“Steve,” Bucky said, but it wasn’t an answer to Quill’s question. It was the beginning of a recorded message. “Thanos is coming. He wants the Infinity Stones. There’s a strong chance he knows there are two of them on Earth -- the Time Stone and the Mind Stone -- and he doesn’t care who he has to go through to get them. Get the word out NOW and get ready for war. We’re on our way.”

Bucky sent the message and, seeing that it was already (and very fortuitously) being picked up by a Lem comms ship, Bucky took a gamble and opened the line to the New York Sanctum.

“Hello, Barnes. Is this urgent?” Strange answered in clipped tones.

“Not if you’ve already heard the news -- Thanos is on his way. You might want to get your magic ducks in a row and see about protecting the planet until we get there.”

“Wait!” a voice Bucky had never heard before said in the background. Strange took half a step to the side, revealing a stocky man in dusty clothes. “You know about Thanos?”

Gamora said from behind Bucky’s shoulder, “We do.”

“And,” Quill butted in, squeezing into the frame, “we know about the Infinity Stones.”

“How many does he have?”

“Two definitely,” Quill said and Bucky glumly corrected him: “At least three.”

Strange asked, “What does he plan to do with all six once he has them?”

“Bring balance to the universe,” Gamora said, “by destroying half of all the life in it.”

“See!” The dust-covered man shouted. “I told you!”

“Indeed you did.”

“We need the Avengers!”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Good luck with that. I’ve sent a message to Steve. You’ll want to contact Stark separately. And leave my name out of it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well if you’ve got time for a long story, go ahead and mention me.” Hovering his hand over the disconnect button, Bucky promised, “We’ll be in touch once we’re in range. Lock up those Infinity Stones until you’re good and ready to face an assault.”

With that, Bucky cut the line.

“Mantis?” Quill prompted.

“I have a course plotted to Earth.”

“Then let’s buckle up, people. It’s time to save the galaxy again.”

It was time to save more than that, but Bucky let Quill have his moment. It was Gamora who asked Bucky, “The Avengers -- what do you know about them?”

“Thor mostly had it right. They are the Earth’s mightiest heroes.”

“What’d he get wrong?” Quill wanted to know.

“They had a falling out and haven’t worked together in years.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“Because the Winter Soldier killed Tony Stark’s parents?” Mantis checked.

“Because Steve wouldn’t trust the United Nations -- Earth’s chief council of world leaders -- to either tell him what to fight for or give me a fair hearing.” Bucky got ready to navigate since Gamora was taking over the copilot’s station. “Stark and his group take orders from the UN. Steve and his people are rogue soldiers and wanted criminals. We’ll be lucky if they can pull together in time for it to do any good at all.”

Quill muttered, “We’re gonna need a backup plan if we’ve gotta buy time.”

“Yeah.” Again, Bucky glanced at Gamora.

She stiffened.

Yeah, Bucky had an idea on how to redirect Thanos’ attention, but he’d really rather not let it come to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my headcanon wherein Bucky’s rank of sergeant (in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) was earned because he showed an aptitude for warfare strategy and leadership qualities (and a talent for being a sniper, as per canon). I like to think that he comes from a long line of military men, so as the oldest son it was kind of a foregone conclusion that he’d follow in their footsteps, and he enlisted BEFORE the war really gained momentum. If he’s about 26 years old when we meet him in the first Captain America movie, and he went into the army right out of high school, then he’s already got something like seven years of experience under his belt. In this fic, Bucky knows strategy and he knows how to manage logistics (versus Quill who is awesome at wily escape plans and short-term trickery; versus Gamora who capitalizes on opportunity, gets in, gets the job done, and gets out; versus Drax who is all about avenging his family with roaring thunder you can see coming a mile away; versus Mantis who can manipulate states of mind and (in this fic) create mirror dimensions). Everyone has a strength, but if Bucky had been part of the Guardians of the Galaxy in Infinity War, I am positive Gamora wouldn’t have been captured on Knowhere. The sergeant in him would have seen it as the Worst Strategy EVER.
> 
> How is Quill good with Bucky calling the shots, you ask? (Because, yes, I agree that Quill needs to be “the boss”… or at least THINK he’s the boss.) Well, Quill helped Bucky when Bucky was at an all-time low (in “The End of the Line” and again in “A Shot in the Dark”) so he’s seen Bucky at his worst. Over the years, Bucky has grown so much (in part due to Quill’s support) and he has probably saved Quill’s butt a bunch of times, so there’s a lot of trust there. Also, Bucky doesn’t normally argue with Quill about being the captain because Quill still knows space a lot better than Bucky does. And I think maybe Quill has learned from Bucky that sometimes you gotta step down and let someone more knowledgeable call the shots. So right now Bucky’s making the big decisions and Quill is OK with that because he recognizes that this is Bucky’s area of expertise. Quill doesn’t know Thor from a bump on an asteroid, so he really gets his back up when Thor starts bossing people around.


	4. Chapter 4

It took way too many hyper-jumps, in Bucky’s opinion, to get to Earth.

As soon as they popped out of hyper space, Bucky was eagerly checking the ship’s messages. There was one from Steve. Short to the point of being suspicious, but it didn’t so much as poke Bucky’s paranoia because he could not think of any other person whose “go-to” ground zero against a powerhouse like Thanos would be Wakanda.

Still, it was prudent to confirm. So Bucky sent a quick message to Steve’s phone: “You there yet, punk?”

Not ten minutes later, the reply came: “Waiting on you, jerk.”

Yup, that was definitely Steve.

Quill pulled the _Quadrant_ up along the far side of the moon, synching its orbit with the satellite’s rotation in order to keep the ship concealed in its pitch black shadow.

“Get your shit,” Quill ordered everyone. “Next stop is Terra.”

Gamora, Mantis, and Drax collected the bags they’d packed during the lull between jump points. Bucky hung back, watching Quill power down the _Quadrant._ Once that was done, he heaved himself out of the pilot’s chair with a belabored sigh. Bucky stood and held out his hand.

“What’s this?” Quill asked, blinking.

“What’s it look like?” Bucky thrust his hand closer to Quill, insisting on a climber’s clasp. Not unlike an open palm atop a table at a space cafe once upon a time.

Quill clearly remembered if his rueful chuckle was any indication.

As soon as Quill’s hand clamped on, Bucky said, “I know you had people on Xandar. Friends.” Bucky had seen him reading up on the archived news feeds in between each series of hyper-jumps. Thanos had tolerated no resistance between himself and the Power Stone. “I’m sorry.”

Quill shook his head, wincing. Glaring through the grief, he lamented, “I can’t believe I didn’t know. It was last week. I used to be so good about keeping up with all that.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, knowing what it was like to let your own little universe become the most vitally important thing in existence. “But mine and Rocket’s anniversary was coming up.”

Quill grinned, then chuckled weakly at the dig. “Yeah, Gamora wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“The hottest topic two years running,” Bucky joked and let Quill pull him close for a back-slapping hug.

“What’s going on,” Quill murmured so quietly that, had Rocket been in the next seat, even he wouldn’t have heard the words, “between you and Gamora -- this game of evil-eye tag? What do you know?”

“Nothing,” Bucky answered honestly because he didn’t know a damn thing. All he had was a terrible hunch.

Quill wasn’t buying it, but it wasn’t like he could squeeze it out of him. They’d arm wrestled once. Quill hadn’t won.

“We’ve got each other’s backs,” Bucky said simply and, miracle of miracles, Quill let it go at that.

They launched for Wakanda aboard the _Milano._ It was a fast ship, but they’d missed the fastest window by a couple of hours. Quill pushed the engines to the point of guzzling fuel in order to make up for the lost time. If Rocket had been there, he would have shrieked bloody murder.

“Coming up on coordinates,” Bucky announced, glancing up at an unending expanse of tropical forest. “Quill, you need to be lower than this.”

“But those trees--”

“I think the _Milano_ has ‘em beat. Get lower.” He watched the altimeter as the numbers dwindled. He’d done the conversion twice and double-checked it three times. They were definitely at 2600 feet. “Heading--”

“Zero-three-zero. I _know,”_ Quill snarked with enough lip to match Groot. “I’m on it.”

Bucky said nothing.

“Really?” Gamora asked, tensing as the jungle loomed closer, and Quill had to check, “Bucky, are you SURE?”

“I’m sure.”

Drax huffed. “I could have been out-ship for this part.”

And then, just as leafy boughs and solid trunks pressed close--too close--impact imminent, the _Milano_ scooted over and through them, zoomed past a series of camouflaging barriers, and was suddenly skimming over a tranquil lake. On the opposite shore, an impressive city stretched upward between mountain peaks.

“Oh,” Mantis applauded. “It is beautiful.”

“This place reminds me of my manhood trials,” Drax contributed, gaping at the varied landscape.

Bucky was too busy answering an incoming message from air traffic control to offer personal comments. He finalized the exact landing coordinates and forwarded them to Quill, painting a big virtual bullseye on the helipad they’d been assigned. After all the tricky maneuvering Quill had had to do in the past -- landing on shifting dust, choppy ocean waves and, most recently, a bog of quick sand -- this touchdown was decidedly anticlimactic. 

They were here. On Earth.

A wave of anxiety pushed through Bucky, dissolving his numb determination and then firing up his nerves until his pulse was galloping. He stayed in his seat for a moment longer than necessary, watching through the canopy as figures emerged from the nearest building. He breathed, trying to keep his wristwatch from going off like an airstrike alarm.

“You OK, man?”

He looked up and gave Quill a shaky grin. “Been a while, y’know? Didn’t leave on the best terms.”

“It’s gonna be OK,” Quill promised, startling Bucky and reminding him that while Quill had many faults, letting his friends down was not one of them.

The king of Wakanda himself was there, flanked by his red-garbed guards, the Dora Milaje.

“King T’Challa,” Bucky garbled, inclining his head and then startling when he felt the man’s hand clasp his upper arm. The left one.

“My apologies. We promised you aid, but were unable to deliver on that.”

Bucky shook his head on a swallow and found his voice. “No, you did actually.” Because space -- a home with the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy -- really had helped Bucky in the best ways. He had no regrets.

King T’Challa looked from Bucky to Quill and Gamora and Drax and Mantis. He aimed his smile at Bucky again. “It is good to see you looking so strong. From what I understand, that strength will be needed.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed and then quickly introduced the rest of the crew, finishing with, “Our captain and Star-Lord, Peter Quill.”

“Star-Lord Quill,” the king said with deference and Quill’s chest puffed up.

This time, when Bucky caught Gamora’s eye, they swapped smothered grins.

“Bucky?”

He looked up and gaped. There was Steve, somehow even taller than Bucky remembered as he hurriedly strode across the plaza.

“Hey, man. How’s the incognito working for you?” Bucky joshed, pointing to Steve’s beard.

“Not as well as it did for you,” Steve said, stepping right up for a brisk hug. “Had some close calls these last two years.”

“Captain America,” Bucky laughed, “finally comes back to bite you on the ass.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“Says the punk.”

Moving back, Steve introduced his people. Bucky remembered Sam Wilson (and offered him a tight smile in exchange for the man’s forced grin, silent nod of greeting, crossed arms, and braced stance) and then there was the stocky stranger Bucky had briefly spoken to earlier when he’d called the New York Sanctum (a scientist named Bruce Banner), and finally a close friend of Tony Stark’s who urged everyone to call him Rhodey.

Bucky named the crew a second time: Drax, Mantis, Gamora, Captain and Star-Lord Peter Quill.

As Rhodey sidled close enough to ask Mantis, “Are those antennae?” Steve looked toward the spacecraft before quietly inquiring, “Where’s Rocket? You guys didn’t break up, did you?”

“Naw, we’re better than ever. He and Groot are babysitting some Asgardian. Thor. You know him?”

“Know him!” Bruce sputtered, wedging himself into the budding conversation. “He’s the one who sent me here to warn all you guys.”

Quill squinted. “You were on the _Statesman?_ You saw Thanos?”

“Yeah. How did you--”

“Perhaps,” King T’Challa smoothly interjected, “we might continue this briefing indoors with the others.”

The “others” apparently included one woman named Wanda Maximoff and another woman who was none other than Natasha Romanoff.

Bucky didn’t offer to shake her hand. “Well, this is awkward,” he muttered through an uncomfortable smile.

She shrugged. “At least you remember me this time.”

“This time?” Quill suggestively drawled, brows arched and clearly assuming things that were not true.

Bucky said, “Remember that video Stark showed you of me, the Winter Soldier, breaking out of that government building?”

“No,” Drax said as Mantis nodded vigorously.

Bucky got to the point: “I tried to kill her.”

Sam cleared his throat. “You tried to kill a lot of people in this room.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”

King T’Challa’s chin tilted to the side and he speculated, “You have found a way to undo the Hydra conditioning?”

“To control it.”

Quill’s hand slapped Bucky on the back. Hard. “Seen it myself. He’s good to go.”

Which reminded Bucky: “Why isn’t Stark here?”

“He’s missing,” Rhodey reported, looking very unhappy.

Banner volunteered, “The last I saw of him, he was going after some fishy-looking alien with serious telekenetic powers--”

“Maw,” Gamora growled.

“Maw?” Sam checked and Steve asked, “Who is Maw?”

“A son of Thanos.” Turning back to Banner, Gamora asked, “Was anyone else with him?”

“Uh, yeah. A big spiky guy with a hammer?”

“Cull.”

“Another son of Thanos?” Steve guessed, and Rhodey demanded, “Just how many kids does this guy have?”

“Six. Including me.”

Sam startled. “Oh, hello.”

Natasha shifted, her hands inching closer to the weapons she carried. “You might have mentioned that sooner.”

“HEY,” Quill butted in despite the fact that Gamora did not need anyone to run interference for her. Now or ever. “We’ve just been through this with that Thor dude--”

“He is not a dude,” Drax argued.

Mantis supplied, “He is the pirate-angel!”

“Gamora hates Thanos,” Quill bullied onward, “and she wants to stop him just as much as--”

“MORE THAN,” Gamora firmly corrected.

“--MORE THAN the rest of us. We’re all on the same team here: Team Hurt Thanos.”

“KILL Thanos,” Drax insisted, drawing his knives and causing a kerfuffle among T’Challa’s guards.

Quill put out both hands. “OK, OK. My bad. Team Kill Thanos.” Then, grumbling, he added, “So much for diplomacy.”

“Let me get this straight,” Bucky said to Banner. “If Stark went after Maw, then why the hell are you all just standing around here?”

“Because Maw went after Doctor Strange and kidnapped -- er, I guess it would be sorcerer-napped?-- him and then Tony went after Maw’s spaceship and now we’ve got no idea where either of them are. Oh, and there might be a kid with them. Shoots spider webbing from his hands or something? We weren’t really introduced.”

Sam huffed. “Great. That guy.” He side-eyed Bucky, who was mushing his lips together in an _if-that-don’t-beat-all_ moue of irritation.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, recalling the fight at the airport in Saxony. “We’ve met.”

Steve summed up, “So we’ve got three unaccounted for.” To Gamora, he wondered, “Why would Maw go after this Doctor Strange?”

As realization hit, Bucky’s head titled back in lieu of having a wall handy to bang it against. “Because Strange has got an Infinity Stone.” _Son of a bitch._

“Which one?” Natasha asked, looking from Rhodey to Steve.

It was Sam who answered: “Well, we got the Mind Stone here, so it’s gotta be either the Soul Stone or--”

“The Time Stone,” a new arrival and familiar voice announced.

Mantis gasped and Bucky spun around--

_God damn it is a day for surprises, isn’t it?_

\--just as Quill snapped at the man: “What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Bucky extended an arm toward Mantis as he snarled at the sorcerer standing on the threshold: “You son of a bitch.”

Gamora accused, “Strange told us you were dead.”

“He,” Drax declared, eyeing the very much alive-looking Daniel Drumm, “is not dead.”

Quill flapped his arms. “Yes, we can all see that. Thank you, Drax.”

“You are welcome.”

Mantis inched cautiously forward, clutching Bucky’s left arm tightly. “You are alive?”

Drumm paused and, with regret, said, “My name is Jericho Drumm. I believe you were acquainted with my twin brother Daniel.”

Drax bluntly demanded, “Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

Bucky crowded forward, nudging Mantis back behind him. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a bone to pick with you--”

“Hey!” Steve called. “Table it. It’s time to pull together, people.”

 _Damn it._ Bucky felt his face heat, flushing with shame at letting himself get so off-track. Not that he didn’t fully intend to take this asshole to task for stringing Mantis along, barging into her mind and commandeering her dreams, but it couldn’t be a priority right now.

Bucky put forth an effort to focus: “We don’t need to launch a rescue for Stark and them?” Toward Jericho Drumm, he grudgingly bit out, “Strange can get them all back to Earth, can’t he?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly,” Sam echoed, and Rhodey agreed: “Not likin’ the sound of that.”

“Where’s Thor?” Banner suddenly asked. When all eyes turned to him, he nervously clarified, “The, uh, pirate-angel?”

Bucky snorted.

“He’s with Rocket and Groot -- two of my crew -- on his way to Nidavellir.”

“Where?” Natasha prodded, clearly having never heard of it.

“Renowned galactic forge,” Bucky answered. “To get himself some kind of Thanos-killing weapon.”

Steve turned to Bucky. “How confident was he that he could get a hold of something like that?”

“Very,” Quill bit out with annoyance. “Very confident.”

“OK, OK,” Banner stuttered with purpose. “Thor’s got a plan to kill Thanos, and we’ve got a plan to destroy the Mind Stone.”

Quill’s mouth dropped open. Gamora murmured, “You’ve got something powerful enough to destroy an Infinity Stone?”

“Not something,” Steve corrected, shifting to look at Wanda who had been hovering beside the window and making no attempt to participate in the discussion. “Someone.”

“Wanda, right?” Bucky checked and she nodded. “Do you have any idea if you can destroy the other stones?”

She shook her head, at a loss. “I do not know. I’m confident I can destroy the Mind Stone because I’ve have a lot of contact with it over the years. I ‘know’ it.”

“Look,” Gamora interrupted, “destroying one stone is not going to stop Thanos. He’ll just keep doing what he’s been doing for years -- going from planet to planet, massacring half of the population for the sake of preserving life itself. There’s a reason they call him the Mad Titan. Even with a partial set of Infinity Stones, he’ll be unstoppable.”

Steve’s chin lifted. “What do you suggest we do?”

Gamora shook her head, mute with frustration.

Quill bit his lip.

Drax said, “We kill him.”

“And deal with the Infinity Stones after the fact,” Sam concurred with a shrug.

“Thanos must not be allowed to acquire the Time Stone,” Jericho Drumm insisted. “With it, he could reverse time itself.”

Bucky bit back a curse. “And pluck up each stone, following past sightings, rumors, historical records…”

“Precisely.”

Steve nodded. “Then someone needs to make sure Strange doesn’t hand it over.” To Quill, he said, “I believe Star-Lord Quill has a spaceship?”

“Yeeeaaah,” Quill drawled. “Not gonna do us much good if we don’t know where they are.”

“I’ll make a call,” Drumm offered.

Gamora sucked in a deep breath. “I should be there when you do. I might recognize the place.”

As they headed for the neighboring room, which appeared to be a private office, King T’Challa said, “And what about the Mind Stone? We must assume that Thanos and his forces can detect its location.”

“We draw them in,” Steve proposed confidently. “When he comes for it, we engage. Until Thor arrives.”

“Putting a lot of faith in the pirate-angel’s Thanos-killer,” Natasha warned with a humorless smirk.

“If anybody gets past us,” Bucky realistically considered, “we’re going to need someone to conceal the Mind Stone.” He looked at Mantis. “In a mirror dimension.”

“I can do that,” Mantis admitted but Quill put out a hand in objection. “No, if we end up in an up-close and personal confrontation with Thanos, we’re gonna need you.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Bucky acknowledged, “And if Strange isn’t in any shape to protect the Time Stone, you’re going to need a full-fledged sorcerer to go with you. Call Hamir,” Bucky suggested to Mantis.

She nodded and headed to the next room where Gamora and Drumm were making the aforementioned phone call.

“What,” King T’Challa asked, “is a mirror dimension?”

Bucky exhaled. “The way I understand it, sorcerers can create a dimension separate from our reality. Whatever happens in one has no effect on the other. And, the mirror dimension is undetectable to anyone outside of it.” Not unlike the country of Wakanda.

T’Challa’s guard pointed out, “We could use this to conceal the location of the Mind Stone within our boarders _now.”_

“And in doing so,” the king argued back gently, “encourage Thanos to focus all of his resources upon acquiring the Time Stone. We cannot allow that. If Thanos gains mastery over time itself, all hope is lost.”

She wasn’t happy with the king’s assessment, but she didn’t press her point.

T’Challa ordered, “Evacuate the city. Summon the tribes.”

“All of them?” she checked.

The king nodded. “Yes. M’Baku likes a good fight. He will come.”

Gamora returned, straddling the threshold of the rooms (ostensibly to keep an eye on Mantis, who was now in the company of Jericho Drumm). “We spoke to the sorcerer who’s guarding the New York Sanctum in Strange’s absence: Wong. Strange has just been in contact with him. He’s on Titan.”

“Right,” Quill said with a nod. “Let’s ship out. Bucky?”

Bucky met Gamora’s gaze and said, “I promised Rocket I’d meet him on the battlefield. I’m staying here. Gamora? I could use some backup.”

Quill looked between them, from Gamora to Bucky and back again. “Yeah,” he agreed lightly. “You should hang here. Help Bucky protect the stone.”

“Peter…”

“Hey, we got this.” He sauntered over and tugged her into his arms. “Me and Mantis and Drax and Hamir--”

“I will go with you in his place,” Drumm announced.

Gamora moved both herself and Quill aside so that Jericho Drumm and Mantis could rejoin the group.

Drumm told them, “Master Hamir will lend aid here.”

“Space travel doesn’t agree with him after all?” Quill jeered with a boyish grin.

“I imagine he wishes to be on the same planet as his son,” Jericho Drumm mused, “if worse comes to worst.”

“His son?” Mantis inquired.

“Master Wong.” To Gamora, Drumm said, “With whom we just spoke at the New York Sanctum.” To the king, Drumm said, “With your permission, I will bring Master Hamir here immediately.”

The king’s guard stiffened at the request to bypass Wakandan security, but the king nodded. “Yes. Please utilize the helipad.”

As Drumm departed to do that, Bucky moved up alongside Mantis. “Are you OK?”

“Yes, Brother Bucky,” she replied quietly. “He has offered to answer my questions and that is something I am looking forward to very much.”

“Just… be careful. He’s not Daniel.” And he’d been impersonating his own twin brother in Mantis’ dreams. That was plain unforgivable.

“I know.” She held out her arms in a silent demand for a hug and, smiling, Bucky relented.

Drax plodded over. “All of these precautions are unnecessary. I will kill Thanos. You will see.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He headed for the exit and Mantis had to jog a bit to catch up to him.

Off to the side, Quill was whispering to Gamora. She was smiling sadly, shaking her head, but he was adamant about something. Something that Gamora wasn’t arguing with. So maybe he’d figured it out, too: that Thanos could not, under any circumstances, get his hands on Gamora.

Quill pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead. She squeezed his hands. They parted and Quill marched toward the door. Bucky shifted into his path and, quietly, said, “If you don’t bring them all back, Gamora and I are coming to get you.”

“Don’t threaten the captain,” Quill teased but there was a somber look in his eyes. “That’s just not nice.”

“Rocket’s the nice one.”

“Wow. There is literally no one in the galaxy who would agree with that.”

“They will if I end up making the trip to Titan.”

Quill smacked Bucky’s shoulder. “Take care of her.”

“You know I will.”

And with those words, Quill spun around. He walked backwards toward the open doorway, strutting. He blew Gamora a kiss and then turned the corner.

This was it, then. The board was set. The next move would be Thanos’.


	5. Chapter 5

From the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, there was a clear view of the helipad. King T’Challa had planted himself beside Wanda to watch the magic show as Drumm brought Hamir through one of those spinning portal deals.

Bucky was also at the window, standing with arms crossed, but he wasn’t looking at anything he hadn’t seen before. Mostly, he was here because Steve was busy finalizing details with his team and Bucky didn’t know what else to do with himself.

A hand on his arm drew his gaze to Gamora. She offered him a friendly smile before turning her attention to the helipad below. Drax emerged from the aft cargo hatch with a large trunk balanced over his shoulder and Bucky huffed.

“That one of Rocket’s?” she asked as Drax placed it near the helipad’s outer markings.

“Rocket’s and mine.” Feeling generous, Bucky said, “I’ll loan you some knives if--”

Quill emerged from the back of the ship and, looking up at the window, placed a familiar case on top of the trunk. He lifted a hand. Gamora raised hers in answer.

“No need,” she told him. “Quill’s taken care of it.”

The _Milano’s_ hull door closed and Quill jumped into the pilot’s seat, lowering the canopy.

Gamora didn’t look away and Bucky didn’t have the heart to try to distract her because he’d been here not so long ago, watching Rocket launch in a scouter pod.

“Why did you tell him?” Gamora asked.

Bucky shook his head. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Not without knowing for sure.”

She nodded, tracking the ship’s progress as it lifted up into the air. “Well now you do.” When the nose of the aircraft rotated out toward the lake, Gamora sent Bucky a sidelong look.

“First things first,” he told her. “We see if the Mind Stone can be destroyed. We see if Thor brings back anything that can beat Thanos.”

“If we can’t… If he doesn’t…” Her brows tilted in a silent plea. “Thanos cannot know what I know. You’ll make sure, won’t you?”

Bucky turned to look her in both eyes. “You can trust me.”

She nodded jerkily at first but with growing confidence. Bucky reached for her hand and gave her fingers a squeeze.

“I beg your pardon,” King T’Challa said from a few paces away, “but what did the captain leave for you?”

“Our weapons,” Gamora answered bluntly.

“The ones we’re most comfortable using,” Bucky added. With a glance to the guard still standing at the king’s side, Bucky asked, “Don’t suppose you can direct us to customs? We’ve got a couple of laser rifles to declare.”

“And a sorcerer to collect,” King T’Challa noted, watching Hamir refuse to accompany the entourage of soldiers, seating himself upon the trunk beside Gamora’s case.

Gamora hummed. “Shall we?”

King T’Challa led them down to the helipad and greeted Master Hamir personally. Bucky found himself performing the introductions on Hamir’s behalf.

“You do not speak, sir?” the king asked with curiosity.

Hamir shook his head and, suddenly, Bucky remembered hearing this man’s voice once. On a falling island. So Hamir could speak -- he had the ability -- yet he chose not to. Well, it was a question for another time.

Bucky opened his trunk for inspection and then stood back, supervising the king’s guard (General Okoye) as she lifted out one weapon after another.

“Please, careful with that one,” Bucky requested. “Rocket likes a hair trigger.”

“Rocket,” she repeated. “This is the name of your friend?”

“Yes. I’m expecting him.”

“And is he human, like you and the captain?”

Bucky opened his mouth and imagined saying “He’s a cybernetically engineered raccoon with an attitude problem who can build bombs out of spare parts in ten seconds or less,” but instead Bucky answered, “Not exactly.”

“Bucky and Rocket are mates,” Gamora corrected General Okoye. “Not friends.”

Bucky smiled wryly at Gamora who gave him an innocent look. “That’s not really relevant information right now.”

“It’ll be obvious to anyone with eyes once he gets here.”

And what could Bucky do other than own it? “And I am looking forward to that.”

The battle against Thanos, though, not so much.

It wouldn’t have seemed so daunting if Bucky had simply known where Rocket was. If he was still on-target with his mission. If he was safe.

“Stop worrying,” Okoye told him, surprising Bucky. “Worry benefits no one except the enemy.”

“You’re right,” he agreed and watched her lift out a sword for inspection. It was sheathed and there was a trick to opening it. He gestured her through the locking sequence on the scabbard until the gleaming blade was revealed.

“This is truly impressive,” she assessed, admiring the fine edge.

“Cotati metal,” Gamora told her, beaming Bucky’s way because not only had he finally listened to sense and invested in a sword, but he’d been a pretty good student at learning how to use it, too.

Inspection completed, Okoye permitted them to haul their arsenal inside, directing them to leave everything in the ground floor armory. After that, she led them upstairs, not back to the audience hall that they’d been hashing things out in, but to a quiet room in a tall tower that overlooked a wide meadow in the distance.

Wanda was there, pacing in the sitting area. Off to the side and through the archway, figures moved back and forth between monitors and machinery. There was a table with a prone form upon it: male with beet-red skin.

Bucky remembered him from Leipzig-Halle.

Three mechanical arms were shooting precision lasers at a yellow stone resting in the center of that smooth forehead. Bucky guessed this was a procedure to remove the Mind Stone from the person it had been imbedded in.

“I remember you,” the being on the table said, slowly opening his eyes and returning Bucky’s stare. “They called you the Winter Soldier.”

“That’s what Hydra called me. Everyone else just calls me Bucky.”

“Hm. Bucky. Apologies for the past misunderstanding. I later learned that your cause was just.”

“But still misguided.” Bucky further admitted, “I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

“Vision,” he readily supplied, smiling at something just to Bucky’s right and beyond.

Bucky glanced over and the gentle, exasperated look on Wanda’s face told him everything he needed to know.

She softly scolded Vision: “Shuri can work faster if you’re resting.”

“I am resting.”

“And holding still.”

“I have not moved a nanometer.”

“I can see your lips moving.”

“Ah, but you’re the only one who would be concerned about those.”

She shook her head on a sigh.

The woman at the far console lifted her hands away from the holographic commands and turned around. “He is quite forward, isn’t he?”

“With every connection severed, I feel more and more free to speak from the heart,” Vision teased, beaming at Wanda.

Bucky, though, was stuck on the receiving end of a chastising look.

“And you,” Shuri accused him, “have forgotten me completely.”

“Hah. Now that’s a lie.” They’d only spoken at length once before Bucky had gone under in cryo-freeze, but the conversation had been memorable. “How are you, Shuri?”

“Disappointed,” she admitted, spine straight and face struggling not to smile. “I heard someone else fixed you.”

God, that sounded awful. No doubt she knew just how awful, too. He resisted the urge to reach down and check -- just to be sure -- that he still had all the male equipment he’d been born with (and no doubt Shuri would have roared with laughter if he had gone ahead and done it), but they were here on business.

“I’m great,” he said instead. “Thanks for asking. How’ve you been?”

“Busy. Not as busy as you, though -- I hear you have got a boyfriend.”

Bucky squinted at her. “Were you listening in down at the helipad?”

“Of course!” She looked past Bucky’s shoulder. “But I doubt this is him. Hello, I am Shuri.”

“Gamora. And no, I am definitely not Bucky’s boyfriend.” She smirked and Bucky bit back a sigh: she was definitely going to be telling Rocket about this later.

“And before you embarrass us all,” Bucky interrupted, “this is Master Hamir, who is also not my boyfriend.”

Gamora said, “We’re here to help protect the lab.”

With a nod toward the console that Shuri had been using, Bucky asked, “That have its own power supply?”

“It does.”

“Is it fully charged?”

“It is.”

“Can you finish up here--” He gestured toward her patient. “--relying solely on that?”

“It is likely.” Shuri watched Hamir pace the room. “What are you doing?”

Bucky quickly explained about mirror dimensions, keeping his attention turned away from the operating table where Vision was clasping Wanda’s hands to his chest as he whispered fanciful promises to her, ignoring Wanda’s every effort to shush him.

“A mirror dimension,” Shuri mused, enthralled. “Is it bad that I desperately want to make one of those for myself now?”

“No,” Gamora said, while Bucky cheekily replied, “Yes. Very desperate of you.”

Shuri harrumphed, arms akimbo. But then her smile faded and her shoulders slumped. “I am sorry we could not help you.”

“It’s OK. I found the help I needed.” He summoned what he hoped was a brave smile. “Now I’m here to pay it forward.”

“Here? In my lab?”

“I’ll be standing guard outside,” Gamora explained. “Master Hamir will be in here with you. If anyone gets past me, he’ll keep you safe so that you can continue working.”

“All this fuss!” Vision tutted, drawing Bucky’s attention.

“You haven’t been attacked,” he quizzed them, “by anyone looking to pry that rock out of your head?”

“Well, not really--”

Wanda spoke over his weak protest: “There were two. A man with a sceptre and a woman with horns.”

Gamora nodded, recognizing them.

“They found us in Glasgow,” Wanda continued, tightening her grip on Vision’s hands, “but before they could do anything, suddenly, Steve and Nat and Sam were there.” She looked at Bucky. “Steve said you sent warning. Thank you.”

Bucky nodded and hoped that the time he’d bought them would be enough.

Shuri clapped her hands together. “Well! I need some tea and some chocolate,” she declared. “Any takers?”

Bucky accepted for all of them: “Yes, thanks. We’d love some.”

“You should get some rest,” Gamora argued. “Thanos will be here soon.”

Hopefully without the Time Stone because, if he did have the Time Stone, then it wouldn’t matter how rested Bucky -- or anyone else -- might be. “Yeah, don’t think I’ll be sleeping much, though.”

“Rocket is fine.”

But Bucky wasn’t. And he hadn’t gone to bed alone in something like two years. Actually, he wasn’t sure he wanted to even try because what if he could? What if he dropped off like a stone into a pond? What if he didn’t need Rocket as much as he thought he did? Another Bucky -- younger and still whole -- would have scoffed at his fear, but that didn’t change the fact that he was afraid. Of everything, it seemed.

He hadn’t felt this uncertain of himself and his future since he’d found Captain America standing in his kitchen in Bucharest.

So, after guzzling his tea and stealing a single piece of chocolate for the road, Bucky headed out. The guards stationed at every junction in the corridors silently directed him down to the helipad. He found a bench and sat down. Looked up at the darkening sky.

> “Whachu starin’ at the stars for?” Rocket had asked him once, many months ago on some desolate planet that had offered fresh water and little else.
> 
> As they’d waited for the _Milano’s_ tanks to refill, Bucky had said, “They tell stories.”
> 
> Rocket’s ears had perked up. “What kind of stories?”
> 
> So Bucky had recounted the adventures of Perseus and Orion as his father had told them when they’d gone on family camping trips. Rocket had listened, rapt, staring up at alien constellations as he’d leaned against Bucky’s side.
> 
> “As stories go, those ain’t bad,” Rocket had decreed.
> 
> “You’ve never just sat and stared up at the stars?”
> 
> “Not without hopin’ one of ‘em would do something interesting, like explode.”
> 
> “Hm. You ever seen an exploding star?”
> 
> “Nope. Not yet.”
> 
> So Bucky had braced himself on both hands and studied the sky with Rocket, looking for supernovas.
> 
> After several long minutes, Rocket had admitted, “Y’know, even if one of ‘em does blow up, it’ll probably be too far away for us to see. And if we do see it, well, that ain’t gonna be so good for us, probably.”
> 
> “It happened once,” Bucky had argued. “On Earth. A star real far away blew up and they could see it in the sky, during the daytime, too. Lasted a couple of days… weeks, maybe.”
> 
> “Did you see it?”
> 
> “Naw, it was a long time ago.” Which had reminded Bucky: “I’m going to be turning one hundred and one years old on my next birthday.”
> 
> “Is that old?”
> 
> Bucky had nodded. “Sure is. I’ve only been unfrozen for maybe thirty.” He shifted, lifting a hand to Rocket’s neck to tunnel his fingers into his mate’s fur. “How many years do you remember?”
> 
> “Dunno. Not thirty.” Rocket had squinted, speculating. “How long ago’d we meet?”
> 
> “A year and a half, maybe.”
> 
> “OK,” Rocket had mused and Bucky had recognized his tone: he was calculating. “I guess I’ve been with Quill an’ them for a little longer than that. Met Groot maybe half a span earlier, so… five years?”
> 
> “Five years,” Bucky had repeated, aghast. “I’m a cradle-robber.”

_That had been fun to explain,_ Bucky remembered, grinning up at the Wakandan night sky. 

“With a smile like that, I’m afraid to ask,” Steve said, announcing himself.

Bucky scooted over, making room on the bench for Steve to sit his Captain America ass down, and Bucky laughed quietly remembering how much less space Steve Rogers had used to take up on a shared seat on the train. “Scared already? You’re supposed to shit your britches after the shooting starts, pal.”

Steve sat, rocking back with a smile. “Is that how it goes? I guess I’ve always been too busy busting heads to get it right.”

“All this time--” Bucky shook his head in mock dejection. “You never figured out why the Army issues infantrymen brown uniforms?”

Steve braced his elbows on his knees and laughed at the ground between his feet. “Nope. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to crap on your morale.”

Steve laughed harder. Laughed himself breathless while Bucky grinned until his cheeks hurt.

Eventually, he wound down. Took a deep breath. Sighed. “God, I’ve missed ya, Buck.” 

Bucky nodded. “The good old days.”

“Not so good for me,” Steve pointed out.

“I liked that you needed me,” Bucky blurted. He looked down at his clasped hands, reciting a truth he’d figured out a long time ago but had just never made the time to say: “I guess I figured you always would. Gotta say, I didn’t like it when you turned into Captain America. But that was me being selfish.”

“Buck--”

But once he’d gotten started, it seemed a shame not to just get it out there. All his cards on the table. “And that little drop of resentment I couldn’t let go -- Hydra found that. Poisoned me with it.” He frowned as memories shifted around, hazy recollections of experiments and procedures. “Every time I finished a mission, I got a pat on the head. That was all it took to get me to see it through. Whatever they wanted.” He bowed his head and forced a laugh because if he didn’t laugh it out, he’d cry. “Just a stupid pat on the head.”

Steve was quiet for a long moment and Bucky focused on breathing, in and out. Focused on keeping his heart rate steady. The wristwatch was still set to alert him to a spike in his pulse.

“You’ve got more of your memories back,” Steve eventually said.

Bucky sat up straight. “I got all of ‘em back.”

“What, not that time we trashed the fall formal--”

“Because you got into with with Jeb Wilcox over who was gonna be the next governor?” Bucky sent Steve a look. “And all three of us ended up soaked -- head to toe -- in that God awful cider punch.”

Steve grinned wistfully. “It was awful, wasn’t it?”

“We were practically heroes at school for saving everybody from having to choke it down.”

“Right. Because it was Nurse MacCarty’s special recipe.”

“And she’d stick us good with a needle if she was in a bad mood.”

Steve nodded. “How come they always scheduled the school formals before vaccinations and checkups?”

Bucky snorted out a chuckle. “Evil bastards.”

Exhaling slowly, Steve’s lips mashed together in thought. “You were right. We had some good times back then.” He looked down at his hands. “I can’t apologize for volunteering for Erskine’s program, though.”

“I ain’t asking you to.” Bucky looked up. “It’s your life. You decide what you do with it. And, eventually, I had to grow up and figure out what to do with mine.” With a crooked grin, he joked flatly, “Couldn’t follow Steve Rogers around, finishing his fights for him forever.”

“Huh. Yeah. I guess it was kind of a full-time job, wasn’t it?”

Bucky laughed. “There were days…”

“Space has been really good for you,” Steve blurted. “The Guardians, too.”

“Finally found my calling, I guess.”

“You don’t miss it? I mean, here -- Earth? Helping people?”

“I do help people.”

“Human people.”

Bucky opened his mouth. Closed it.

“I don’t mean that other people out there aren’t worth saving, it’s just--these are _your_ people.”

“No, Steve. They’re not. Not anymore. It’s--it’s hard to explain.”

“No, it’s not,” Steve said, calling him on his bullshit. “You just don’t wanna hurt my feelings.”

That was true. But Steve was staring at him expectantly and, as ten seconds turned into thirty... and then sixty, it was clear that Steve wasn’t going to let it go. Bucky said, “That’s maybe the one thing Hydra took that I can’t get back.” He paused, commanded his pulse to slow, slow, slow. “I’m here because of what Thanos did to Drax’s family and Gamora. I’m here because Mantis -- and however many millions just like her out there -- are so innocent. I’m here because this is gonna be the fight for the universe and nothin’ is gonna stop Rocket from dive-bombing right into the middle of it.” Bucky had to stop and chuckle, imagining it, but eventually he had to finish what he’d started saying: “I’m not here to save humanity -- I gave up on believing that humanity could be saved a long time ago.”

“But you still care.”

Bucky supposed that was true. “Doesn’t mean I have high expectations. Actually, my expectations are pretty low.”

“Yeah. I can see how that’d be the case.”

“The good news is I won’t be disappointed again.” 

“Famous last words.”

“Well, you’d know -- you are famous and you’ve always gotta have the last word.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

Steve shook his head but kept his teeth together. Bucky rolled his eyes because of course Steve would go out of his way to prove Bucky wrong. Some things really were constants in the universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this fic, Bucky finds out about Thanos and the Infinity Stones just as Bruce Banner is explaining the same things to Strange and Wong. He then calls Steve at least thirty minutes before Bruce Banner contacts him using the flip phone that Tony got at the end of Civil War. So Vision was not attacked in Glasgow (or is it Edinburgh?? Wiki says it’s Edinburgh, but my memory insists it’s Glasgow) -- Steve, Natasha, and Sam got there before the shit hit the fan. (In the movie, Strange goes and collects Tony Stark and then Tony dicks around NOT calling Steve Rogers and then Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian show up and that whole mess happens and FINALLY after Stark and Strange and Parker are all launched into space, Banner finds the flip phone and calls Steve. So of course Steve, Natasha, and Sam arrive just in the nick of time and Vision is all punctured and whatnot.)
> 
> Also, Rocket has come a long way since he tried to capture Quill on Xandar (at the beginning of the first GotG movie). We can infer from Bucky’s comment about Rocket wanting to be involved in the fight against Thanos that, these days, Rocket doesn’t argue for running away from a hard fight... maybe because he’s got a family of badasses who will stand with him. And let’s be real: Rocket loves testing out his latest gizmos and upgrades. He loves impressing Bucky, too. (^_~) Or, actually, maybe this is just how Bucky sees Rocket.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Gore

Bucky fell asleep in an armchair.

He woke to the sound of a doorknob clicking softly twelve or thirteen feet away, and then footsteps on carpet. He opened his eyes in the common room of the guest suite and scowled at the sight of Steve sprawled on the sofa, his head tilted back over the arm, mouth hanging open and otherwise dead to the world. One of the doors opposite stood open and Natasha was crossing the room, dressed for battle.

“What,” she mused on a grin, “did you guys do?” She scanned the coffee table on which rested two lukewarm, mostly empty bottles of water. “I don’t see any beer cans. No cards. Not even a bag of Funyuns? What--did you two pass out _talking?”_

“That’s what I’m waking up to,” Steve sassed, prying open one eye with his fingers and glaring blearily at Natasha.

She shrugged. “That’s what you get for not taking it to the bedroom.”

The only way Bucky was ever crossing the threshold to Steve’s bedroom was if Steve were dying. Or in possession of Rocket’s favorite gun.

Natasha teased as she sauntered toward the kitchenette, “Do I need to be making a list of single men for you to ask out?”

“No,” Steve replied flatly, letting his arm drop.

“I could ask them out first,” she continued, outlining it like it was a mission plan. “Take them out, do some recon, report back--”

“I don’t care what everyone says,” Steve grunted out, “you are not a good bro, Nat.”

“Yes, I am. I’m making coffee. C’mon,” she finagled, dropping whole beans into the grinder. “Who’s a good bro. You can say it. I won’t tell anyone.”

Tilting his chin down, Steve asked Bucky, “There room for another former assassin in outer space?”

“Always.”

“Who said anything about ‘former?’” she mused.

Steve replied by dropping a sofa cushion over his face and looping his arms around it.

Yawning, Bucky stood and stretched. He shuffled toward the door that led to the bathroom, palming the doorknob before he remembered to knock. Luckily, it was unoccupied. He pissed, washed his face, gargled, and then rejoined the land of the living.

Sliding onto a bar stool at the kitchen island, Bucky checked his watch. Still, no message from Rocket via the Lem network and the computer network shared by the _Quadrant_ and the _Milano._ To confirm that he was, in fact, receiving a signal, Bucky checked on Gamora. According to the readout, she was alive and probably kicking around Shuri’s lab if Bucky was figuring the proximity data right.

A mug cup slid in front of him. “Black coffee,” he noted, still feeling foggy.

“How do you usually take it?”

“Blue,” he said, bypassing the handle and singeing his fingertips against the heated ceramic.

Natasha repeated, “Blue, huh? Doesn’t that sound fun.”

Bucky hovered his face over the steam, inhaling the scent. Space java just didn’t have much of an aroma (hence the herbs and spices that Mantis liked sprinkled on hers) and OK maybe Bucky had missed this. A little bit.

Another door opened and Rhodey walked out and into the bathroom. As soon as he wandered into the kitchen, Sam emerged from a third bedroom. He detoured toward the sofa and called, “Yo, Cap. This is your ‘Reveille’ -- don’t make me get the bugle.”

Steve’s wrist flicked on top of the sofa cushion, shooing Sam away. Sam went, shaking his head.

Bucky held out a hand for Steve’s cup of coffee. “Gimme that,” he instructed Rhodey, who slid it over. Clutching Steve’s cup, he stood, stomped over to the sofa, and kicked the foot that was dangling just above the floor. “Up and at ‘em or I’m spitting in your coffee.” Bucky proceeded to noisily suck the snot out of his nostrils and whip it into a big, fat loogie on his tongue.

The sofa cushion was flying across the room and Steve was lunging for the cup before Bucky could open his mouth. Bucky surrendered it and retreated before Steve could kick him in the shins. He headed back to the bathroom to spit out the phlegm and then meandered into the kitchen, passing Sam, Rhodey, and Natasha.

Bucky gulped the rest of his coffee down. “My work here is done. Natasha, the coffee was good. Thanks.”

“Hate you,” Steve grumbled at Bucky’s retreating back.

“Say it like a man, punk.”

Incoherent mumbling answered his challenge.

“I gotta remember that,” Sam muttered, and Bucky stepped out into the hall smirking.

Just before the door closed, he heard Steve growl, “Try it and I’ll knock your block off.”

Bucky chuckled to himself, but he only made it half a dozen steps before his levity faded and he recalled the conversation from the night before.

Steve’s hatred for Hydra. His guilt at losing Bucky on that damned train.

_“I’d gotten you killed, Buck. How was I supposed to live with that?”_

It explained how Steve had ended up stuck on a Hydra jet with zero backup and frozen in a hunk of ice for seventy years. It had been a suicide mission from start to finish. Steve hadn’t expected to survive. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. He definitely hadn’t thought he’d deserved to have a life when Bucky had lost his.

Bucky paused and asked the nearby guard how to get to Shuri’s lab. Not because he couldn’t remember the way but because he needed an excuse for loitering in the corridors and it was easy enough to look lost in the palatial structure.

Bucky thanked the man for the directions and, as he made his way toward the indicated elevator, Bucky wished he could have coughed up some meaningless reassurances to offer Steve, but Bucky had never been a very good liar. Steve would’ve seen right through it. All he’d come up with was the simple, dead-end truth: _“It’s not your fault.”_

_“Yours, either,”_ Steve had argued back and yeah, he’d made his point: Steve could no sooner stop feeling guilty for all the things he should have done differently than Bucky could.

And maybe this was why Bucky preferred space, because out there the problems were bigger than Hydra, and Rocket didn’t let Bucky waste time moping around feeling sorry for himself.

“Did you sleep?” Gamora badgered him as he stepped out of the elevator.

“A bit. Did Shuri let you play in her lab?”

“A bit.”

She was such a shit sometimes. Quill’s influence, Bucky was sure. “You’re ready for war,” he noted, taking in the holsters and weapons she was sporting.

“It’s on the agenda,” she retorted.

Bucky glanced past her toward the waiting room and lab. “How’s it looking in there?”

“At last glance, less than a trillion neural connections to go.”

“Oh. We’re in the homestretch then,” Bucky snarked and she punched his shoulder.

“We are, actually.”

Bucky would have to take her word on that; he hadn’t been present when the initial estimates had been flying around. “Hamir still--”

A roaring whoosh overhead -- like a meteor streaking across the sky on a Doppler-shifted scream -- and then: _BOOM!_

The building didn’t shake but it hummed with energy rushing up from the ground.

Bucky and Gamora sprinted to the windows of the waiting area. Wanda was looking up and, beside her, Hamir was unfolding himself from a meditative pose. In the sky above, an explosion of dust and the flicker of dying flame. Something had just smashed into the dome surrounding Wakanda.

“He’s here,” Gamora whispered.

In the distance, three more massive and angular ships crashed into the forested hills like spearheads, one after the other, and stood like sentinels. Ominous in their silence.

“You heard from Quill?”

She shook her head. “Rocket?”

“Nothing yet.” And he couldn’t afford to wait around here hoping for an update. “Let’s synch up,” he said, programming his watch to connect directly with Gamora’s and hers with his. They’d be able to monitor each other constantly and communicate with a voice command activation.

“You look under-dressed,” Banner announced, jogging out of the lab and toward the elevator.

“I am. Going down?”

“Is up an option?”

“Not that I know of.” With a pat to Gamora’s arm, he jumped back into the elevator that Banner had called. The button for the first floor was already lit.

Banner cleared his throat. “I heard you’ve been in battles before.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said.

“But not against anybody like Thanos.”

“Maybe not, but my unit went up against Hydra.” Bucky’s eyelids flinched at the memory of blue light and his fellow soldiers disintegrating in front of his eyes. Instead of telling Bruce how badly the 107th had been outclassed and outgunned, Bucky gave the man an evaluating look. “This isn’t your first fight.”

“Naw, well, yeah. As, y’know, me. Not the other guy. The Hulk.”

Bucky nodded.

“I mean, he might show up. Likes to hold out until the last second, though.”

Bucky’s head cocked to the side. “You don’t control him?”

“No.” Banner looked at Bucky hard as the elevator started to slow. “You were serious about being able to control the Winter Soldier?”

With a quirk of his brows and a tiny smirk, Bucky reached out to hold the doors open. “Let’s hope I don’t break my record today.”

They parted ways, Banner following Rhodey’s impatient waving toward the Quinjet sitting on a distant helipad. Bucky ducked into the armory and, throwing open the lid of the trunk, suited up.

“Sorry I’m late,” he called out two minutes later as he stepped outside and saw that he was the last to arrive.

“So long as you’re ready for this,” Steve replied without turning around.

Sam chortled and Natasha grinned. Rhodey was the one who said what they were all thinking: “Uh, actually, the dude makes us look bad.”

Steve twisted around and Bucky had the unmitigated pleasure of watching his best friend’s jaw go slack. Bucky’s armor wasn’t much to look at, but it was made from some of the toughest material in the universe: fabric woven through with Cotati metal fibers. Across his chest was a strap that held his sword angled comfortably across his back. Under his right arm was a pistol, an Earth-made semiautomatic. At the back of his waist were two large knives. Spare ammo clips had been snugged against his sides. Small utility knives were nestled along his forearms in bracers that Drax had helped Bucky make. And from each hip hung a laser rifle: his personal favorite on the right and Rocket’s on the left.

Bucky managed to keep his smile bland. “Well? I thought we were in hurry.”

“You actually plan on using all of that?” Banner asked from inside a massive mechanical suit.

“’Course not.” He patted the rifle on his left. “This one’s for Rocket.”

“Rocket,” Sam echoed. “I cannot wait to meet this dude.”

“Any word on Thor’s progress?” Steve asked Bucky who, despite having checked his watch less than thirty seconds ago, glanced at it again.

“No. Not that that means anything.”

Rhodey harrumphed. “Oh. He’s that kind.”

“Not necessarily,” Banner argued. “The message would have to get picked up locally before going through hyperspace and finally being transmitted here.”

“Sometimes there’s a delay,” Bucky agreed and refused to consider the alternative.

Steve double checked his new vibranium shields. “Gamora and Hamir are in position?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The doors opened and King T’Challa -- the Black Panther -- emerged with his guard.

Captain America said, “Let’s do this.”

The march out to the edge of Wakanda’s defensive barrier was a mostly silent one in that no one had much to say.

Wakanda’s armies assembled, converging on the focal point of the coming invasion. The warriors’ cloaks flashed with energy from the vibranium woven into the fabric. Spears and sickles glinted in the sunlight.

Bucky waited beside General Okoye as King T’Challa, Steve, and Natasha approached the barrier. On the other side, Bucky saw two figures step out to meet them. One, big and spiky.

“That’s gotta be Cull,” Banner remarked. “Bucky, you know the other?”

He did not. But the woman’s horns made her a likely candidate for one of Vision’s would-be assailants in Glasgow.

From Bucky’s watch (and her post outside Shuri’s lab, high above the meadow), Gamora’s voice said, “That’s Proxima. Her husband Corvus Glaive should be there.”

And the fact that he wasn’t was cause for concern. To Okoye, Bucky said, “They may try a flanking maneuver.”

She agreed with a nod. “I have put the palace guard on high alert. We will know the moment they attempt a secondary assault.”

There was a short but inaudible conversation at the barrier. Then, Bucky watched as T’Challa, Steve, and Natasha made their way back to the front lines. As soon as Steve retook his post, Bucky mused, “They surrender?”

“Not exactly.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. No one moved. No one so much as blinked.

And then the three massive structures cracked and grated open, whole sections sliding up with blade-like precision and pouring nightmares out.

“What the hell?” Bucky hissed, staring hard at the massive jaws and razor-like teeth, black bodies with six powerful limbs, claws and mindless fury. Killing machines, pure and simple.

Natasha mused, “Looks like we pissed her off.”

“Outriders,” Gamora reported.

“You got any advice for us, Gamora?” Steve asked, expression carved from stone.

“Shoot to kill. No mercy.”

No mercy, indeed. No fancy battle tactics, either, for this mindless rabble. Snarling and slobbering, they threw themselves at the barrier, severing limbs and decapitating their own heads. And yet more just kept on coming.

“They are killing themselves,” Okoye observed, sickened, and then watched in horror as a few galloped along the barrier, searching for weaknesses in the shield.

Bucky tensed for action. They couldn’t afford to just stand here and let these creatures circle around behind them. The palace and the city were vulnerable. In order to protect the people taking shelter there, they would have to engage these beasts head-on.

King T’Challa made the call on it, choosing to initiate the battle.

Bucky took a deep breath as the war call rang out, rallying the Wakandan warriors. He unhooked the laser rifle from its holster and powered it on.

**_“Longing,”_ ** he muttered aloud. **_“Rusted.”_ **

Steve looked his way even as he readied his shields.

**_“Seventeen. Daybreak--”_ **

“Bucky?”

**_“Furnace. Nine--”_ **

“Bucky, you sure that’s--”

**_“Benign,”_ ** he continued, unwilling to let anyone -- not even Steve -- break his focus. **_“Homecoming.”_ **

The pain. The cold. The chill. It was a lake of agony and Bucky was open to it, rising out of it, standing above it. It sprawled at his feet, obedient to his will, waiting for his command.

**_“One. Freight car,”_ ** he concluded and directed that terrible strength into his hands. It climbed and crawled up his arms. Ice speared along his spine. His vision narrowed to the things flopping and falling through the barrier. Skin blistered and burned off, flesh smoking, as they snapped and howled.

Bucky’s lip curled in silent reply.

Natasha called out, “Hey, Barnes. You still with us?”

Steve was staring at him and Bucky knew he was submerged in the programming because the concern on the man’s face didn’t irritate him at all. It was a non-factor in the mission.

“Da,” he grunted, scanning the field ahead for high points and hollows.

Steve pressed, “Bucky?”

“I’m with you, Steve,” he grated out, but there was no smile for Captain America this morning. Bucky was in the Winter Soldier’s office, ready to get to work.

King T’Challa spoke into his communicator, “On my signal, open the barrier. Northwest section 17.” He paused. Shouted once more to his warriors. And then: “NOW!”

The barrier vanished and onward they came, surging forth in a great tide of terrible limbs and gnashing teeth.

The Wakandan army charged. Steve and T’Challa raced ahead as Bucky leaped up onto a boulder and began firing. Firing, firing, firing. Precision laser shots that seared through bone and tissue, passing through one monstrous skull and then burning a hole through the creature behind it.

Overhead, Sam and Rhodey swooped in, firing bullets and shooting flame.

As the lines converged, Bucky turned his focus to the creatures that made it through and sprinted unimpeded across the plain. One, two, ten, twenty, fifty-seven--

And yet more poured out from the leviathans.

He kept shooting.

Then, on Bucky’s left, a motion, an Outrider leaping for him--

He ducked, spun after it as it overshot its target. He fired--

A massive body slammed into him from behind. Bucky flew through the air, dropping the rifle. He landed and, rolling into a crouch, yanked the pistol from his shoulder harness--

_POP! POP! POP!_

He leaped over the prone body of the twitching corpse, scooped up the rifle.

Two more Outriders. Flanking him, diving in.

He swung the rifle at one, firing bullets at the other.

Full spin, duck down, laser blast to a gaping maw of sharp teeth.

A fearsome roar and flurry of limbs -- Bucky was flat on his back. Pinned down. Rifle useless. He grabbed for a knife as he fired three more bullets into the thing’s skull. Slit its throat. Kicked his way free and came up on his knees, face-to-face with yet another.

It grinned, baring its terrible teeth, and Bucky was flipping the knife over in his hand--

It charged and he stabbed up into its neck, pressed the barrel of the gun flat against its skull as claws raked over his armor and--

_WHOOSH!!_

Sparkling light -- every color of the rainbow and more -- shot down from the sky, crashing right in the center of the open barrier.

_BANG!_ Bucky pulled the trigger and shoved the body aside, stood, and squinted into the fading rush of light.

He made out three figures: Groot, Thor, and Rocket, who was clutching to the pirate-angel’s shoulder and grinning a fearsomely eager grin. Bucky laughed and Rocket’s ears twitched right in his direction.

Rocket leaped down, firing into the melee. Groot’s vines streaked out, threading through Outriders like he was stringing popcorn for a Christmas tree. Thor’s Thanos-killing weapon came down, smashed into the ground, churning up the earth and decimating every Outrider in a one-hundred yard radius.

Bucky grabbed his abandoned laser rifle as Rocket raced ahead of another wave of creatures launching themselves through the gap.

“Hey, cutie.” Rocket tucked the trusty, old laser cannon he was carrying into the holster along his back and nodded toward the rifle hanging from Bucky’s left hip. “How much for the gun?”

“It’s not for sale,” he retorted, laying down cover fire as Rocket unhooked the weapon.

“OK. How much for the arm?”

“Package deal,” Bucky said, bracing his own rifle under his right arm and lowering his left toward Rocket. “I come with it.”

“Even better!” Rocket crowed, clambering up to Bucky’s shoulder. His feet tucked into familiar footholds among the straps and harnesses crisscrossing Bucky’s torso. A fluffy tail curled around Bucky’s neck. “C’MON!” Rocket roared at the monsters. “C’MON, SPACE DOGS! COME GET SOME!”

Bucky belted out a war cry as Rocket egged the enemy on. He fired from his perch, straddling Bucky’s shoulder, as Bucky moved across the battlefield, sighting and firing, dropping any creature that entered his sights.

_BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!_ Explosions beyond the barrier as one ship erupted into a massive fireball.

“BRING ME THANOS!” Thor bellowed, punching his way through the next transport vessel as though he were tearing the paper wrapping off of birthday presents.

Bucky laughed: first Christmas and now birthdays. Rocket cackled, peppering the dwindling enemy forces with laser blasts. Groot skewered half a dozen Outriders and dragged them across the field, plowing down any that dared to set one toe too close, beaming as he swished his catch back and forth.

Damn but a good time was being had by all.

A brief lull in combat. A paw tangled in Bucky’s hair and Bucky let himself be nuzzled by a gleeful Rocket.

“This is awesome!” Rocket hissed, his body thrumming with the rush of adrenaline.

Bucky beamed. “You can say that again.” He lazily lifted his rifle and fired at the loping figure of an Outrider headed for King T’Challa. The monster crashed to the ground dead, meters shy of its target.

But then the ground itself shifted. Swelled.

Rocket’s ears pricked up. “Hold onto your butt, bright eyes. We got incoming.”

No sooner had Bucky braced himself than soil erupted into the air. He pivoted, spun, flipped back. Rocket landed neatly on the ground beside him and both gaped as a cluster of five enormous, grinding wheels churned upward.

“That’s hardcore,” Rocket assessed.

And then the machines slammed down onto the field, racing across the plain. Combatants, both Wakandas and Outriders alike, disappeared in a spray of dirt.

“Get down!” Bucky bellowed, diving out of the way of a second set of metal jaws. It thundered past and Bucky rolled into the furrow left in its wake. Rocket scooted down the slope to meet him.

“GIMME ANOTHER BOOST!”

Bucky stretched out his left arm and Rocket clawed his way up.

“Get me an angle at the central engine!”

As Bucky darted out across the field, he could hear Rocket tinkering with the controls of his rifle. Few fights were actually waging. Monsters and warriors focused on taking cover in trenches to wait out the passing machinery.

“HOLD ON!” Bucky shouted as he ducked down into a trench where he was forced to stab an Outrider right through the top if its skull while one of those metal wheels skipped over their heads.

The shower of dirt had barely settled when Bucky leaped back onto the field. Sam and Rhodey were focusing firepower on one grinder that was just starting to list to the side, on the verge of toppling.

Bucky headed for a boulder and pulled himself up. “YOU GOT A SHOT?”

Rocket’s belly hitched in a familiar way; he was scoffing. “HOW’S THIS FOR A FRICKIN’ SHOT!” He fired the modified laser rifle in fast sequence, which was good because another line of those saw-blade wheels was heading right for them.

Bucky launched from the boulder, aiming himself and Rocket for another trench--

Suddenly, the machines stopped, reversed, and when Bucky tumbled up onto his knees, rifle at the ready and Rocket panting heavily against his side, he saw Wanda. With outstretched arms and a glowing aura of red, she pushed Thanos’ machines right into a line of Outriders that had regrouped.

Behind Bucky, a mighty _BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! BOOM!_ sounded. He swiveled around in time to see blue energy sparking from the central motors of four fallen grinders. Undoubtedly Rocket’s handiwork. The field was now cleared of machinery and only a few straggling Outriders remained.

“High five,” Bucky told his mate, offering his left hand.

Rocket slapped his palm smartly and then looked around. “Where’s Groot at?”

Bucky squinted. The wide meadow of wind-rippled grass was no more. The upturned earth. The dismembered body parts. The tangled cloth and lost weapons. For a moment, Bucky was back in Italy again -- a helmet on his head, a gun in his hands, and fading hope in his heart.

“There he is! I see ‘im! GROOT!!” Rocket’s shout and his tight grip on Bucky’s thumb wrenched the memory aside.

Bucky stood and followed Rocket over to their friend. Not far away, Steve was still standing. Natasha was upright, blue blood spatter on her cheek. General Okoye and King T’Challa were already reassembling the able-bodied and beginning the search for injured survivors.

The battle was over, and Thanos hadn’t even bothered to show up.

Bucky’s jaw clenched as Rocket’s whoops of celebration echoed in his ears.

His heart pounded and his wristwatch beeped; oh, God. This wasn’t the end of it. Far from it. There would be more to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The grinding wheels are actually called Threshers, but Bucky doesn’t know this, so that’s why he doesn’t use the “official” name for them. He doesn’t know what the transport vessels (i.e. dropships) are called, either.
> 
> The sickle-like weapons are actually called Vibranium Mambele, but Bucky’s not familiar with that term, either.
> 
> Just FYI: the torn earth, body parts, and lost weapons could either be the result of this battle or a memory from Bucky’s war days superimposed on the present. I’m intentionally vague about that here.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: !!SEXYTIMES!!

“Bright eyes?” Rocket asked, looking over even as he patted Groot on the arm for a job well done. “Whachur watch beepin’ for?”

Automatically, Bucky glanced down. He blinked. Twice. “Incoming message. From Quill. They’re outbound from Titan.”

“Titan, huh? Heard o’ that place. A real shithole. What were they doin’ there?”

“Uh, rescue mission.”

“Another one? Pfft. We gotta stage an intervention. This is gettin’ ridiculous.” And then Rocket shrugged off his irritation and waved Bucky over. “C’mere.”

Bucky sank to his knees and Rocket pressed their brows together.

“You brought my favorite gun,” he murmured against Bucky’s mouth, thoroughly charmed, “and here I thought I couldn’t love you more than I already did.”

Bucky barked out a laugh, cupped the back of Rocket’s skull and rubbed his lips over Rocket’s whiskers.

“I thought Rogers was pulling my leg,” Natasha said from a few paces behind Bucky.

Rocket nipped at Bucky’s lower lip before leaning back and advising her, “Well, if you ain’t sure about that, I’d get your leg looked at.”

Bucky snorted hard.

“You are Rocket,” she further observed.

“The one and only,” he replied, a hint of a growl entering his voice. “And you are?”

Bucky glanced over his shoulder at the humongous grin on Natasha’s face. He knew that grin. As the oldest of four kids, Bucky knew that exact grin real well. That was the blackmail smile and Bucky knew he’d be paying for it later.

“Natasha Romanoff,” she answered and held out her hand first to Rocket and then to Groot, who unsurprisingly said, “I am Groot!”

She straightened. “Wow, Barnes. I’m speechless,” Natasha said, that sparkle still twinkling in her eyes.

Bucky told her, “You won’t be hearing any complaints from me on that.”

She ignored him. “Rocket, we’ve all heard so much about you.”

“Is that right?” He quirked a brow at Bucky, who went right ahead and owned up to it: “I missed you.”

“Yeah? An’ whose fault is that?”

“The pirate-angel’s,” Bucky deflected with a grin, massaging the nape of Rocket’s neck. “How was Nidavellir?”

“Oh, man. Bright eyes, you shoulda seen--”

A shadow encroached from Rocket’s flank and he snapped his mouth shut, turning and glaring at the interloper. It was Steve.

“Rocket, good to see you again.”

“Well, you still got both eyeballs, right? So that’s to be expected.”

Steve tucked his lips in, attempting to roll a smile back into his face, but that only made him look like a patronizing windbag as he said, “Nice shooting.”

“Like you could’ve done better. What’s with the back scratchers?” He pointed to Steve’s shields.

Bucky giggled.

Natasha turned a chuckle into a cough.

To Bucky, Rocket wondered aloud, “What kind of moron brings back scratchers to a battle against Thanos?”

Bucky sobered. “You didn’t cross paths with Thanos, did you?”

“Nope. Just a three-story-tall, disgruntled dwarf with a pair of metal hands.”

Bucky’s brows lifted and Rocket confirmed, “Yeah, metal hands -- now there’s a dual-purpose back scratcher.” To Steve he suggested, “You might wanna consider upgrading.”

“I’ll do that.” To Bucky, he said, “In the meantime, do you mind checking in with Gamora? We can’t make contact with Shuri.”

“On it,” Bucky replied. Into his watch, he said, “Gamora, what’s your status?”

“All quiet here. Lab secure.”

“I’m heading that way now.” He asked Rocket and Groot, “You guys staying out here or are you up for a peek inside the palace over there?”

“I am Groot,” the teenage tree said, considering the distant fortress with awe.

Rocket rolled his eyes. “Like I’m letting you outta my sight.”

“Hey. I had it under control.”

“I ain’t talking about the fighting. I’m talking about the blabbing.” Rocket shook his head, grumbling as he tugged on Bucky’s hand. “Talkin’ about me to everybody. Kinda embarrassing.”

“Shut up. You love it.”

“I am Groot,” Groot agreed with a smug nod.

“Eh, whatever,” Rocket ungraciously relented.

They found Gamora outside of Shuri’s lab, almost exactly where Bucky had seen her last. This time, she was crouching over a sprawled figure, a pool of black blood soaking into the tread of her shoes.

“Corvus?” Bucky guessed.

She nodded and, when she stood up, Bucky was relieved to see that her injuries were minor scratches and a couple of bruises that were probably already fading. “He came for the Mind Stone.”

With a frown, Bucky double-checked his watch. “You didn’t alert me.”

“You were a little busy.” Her smile was grim. “He waited until the Threshers were activated to try and slither his way in here.”

Bucky scanned her again, reading the tension in her shoulders and ramrod-straight spine. “You get Quill’s message?”

She nodded. Still, she looked like a pat to the back would strum her like a guitar string.

Bucky lifted his chin in the direction of the lab. From this angle, he couldn’t see any movement, but he wasn’t hearing the whine of the lasers, either. “Everything OK in there?”

“There’s no way to know.” She explained with a single word: “Hamir.”

“I see.” And Bucky did. Something had definitely gone wrong here. Not only was Gamora tense to the point of cracking the enamel of her teeth, but Hamir would not have enclosed Shuri’s lab in a mirror dimension unless he’d genuinely believed that Gamora’s defeat was imminent.

“Hamir is here?” Rocket asked and Bucky quickly answered, “Yes,” before putting out a hand, begging for just a moment before his mate started firing more questions.

To Gamora, he said, “Hey, random question: what does Rocket like to call me?”

“What--bright eyes or cutie?”

“Who got this watch for me?”

“Rocket did.”

“What’s Quill’s favorite song?”

“That’s a trick question -- there’s, like, a thousand of them.” She braced her hands on her hips. “What’s with the interrogation?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled on an exhale. “I just really wanted to be sure you’re, y’know, _you.”_

“Corvus wasn’t a Skrull.”

Bucky nodded and turned his attention back to Rocket. “Yeah, Hamir’s here. And you’ll never guess who’s with Quill, Drax, and Mantis.”

Rocket crossed his arms and twitched his nose in a mute demand for the punchline.

Gamora gave it: “Jericho Drumm. Daniel Drumm’s twin brother.”

“You’re right. I never would’ve guessed that.” A dark scowl slowly pinched Rocket’s brows. “So we’re beating the crap outta the asshole when he gets back from Titan. For all that dream bullshit.”

Bucky nodded tightly. “Yes, we are.”

“What dream bullshit?” Gamora asked, and Groot actually looked interested in hearing about it, too.

Rocket sighed. “Mantis has been having dreams where Drumm pops up and holds her hand and stuff. I dunno the particulars. Bucky gets his shorts in a twist if I ask if they make out.”

Gaze lifting to the ceiling, Bucky shook his head. “He’s been continuing her training in the Mystic Arts.”

“Jericho pretending to be Daniel?” Gamora summed up.

Groot scowled. “I am Groot.”

“Yes,” Rocket agreed. “Very shifty. That’s why we’re gonna pummel the peeving daylights outta him when he gets here.”

 _Living daylights,_ Bucky didn’t bother to correct because he honestly didn’t see all that much difference.

“I am Groot?” the Flora colossus asked eagerly.

Rocket and Bucky shared a look. Bucky had no objections, so Rocket shrugged and relented: “Sure. You can help.”

Gamora’s gaze drifted toward the windows in the sitting room. It was barely noon and yet it felt like an entire year had passed since Bucky’s first and only cup of coffee. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he urged her. “Everyone’s probably waiting for the _Milano_ to get back before the next briefing.”

“I’ll stay here,” she declared, indicating the sitting room.

“Best view in this place,” Bucky agreed, knowing she’d be able to track the _Milano_ from its entry through the Wakandan defense screen and over the lake. Groot seemed inclined to hang out with her, so Bucky told them where to find him and Rocket (“Sixth floor, straight shot down the main hall, second door on the left.”) and then Rocket was shadowing Bucky into the elevator.

A paw on his thigh prompted Bucky to open his eyes. He was leaning against the wall and making zero attempt at remaining in the present. “Bad dreams again?” Rocket asked with sympathy.

“Nah. Not much time for that,” Bucky answered with a rueful smile. “Steve and I talked. We had a lot to get through.”

Rocket frowned. “Heavy shit on the eve of battle? Some friend. No, no, listen. If he were a halfway decent friend, he’d take better care of you. You need a solid six hours, bright eyes.”

 _That’s the sort of thing a lover knows,_ Bucky could have argued but didn’t. Instead, he said, “I like when you take care of me.”

“And that’s what I’m gonna do.” Before Bucky could point out that Rocket needed rest, too, he asked, “What’s so special about the view up there?”

“Air traffic corridor.”

“Ah.” Rocket tsked. “I can’t believe you let those morons take off without you.”

Bucky shrugged and, when the elevator stopped, he pushed off of the wall with a lazy heave-ho. “Did you forget? I had a prior commitment.”

“Co-mmit-ment,” Rocket echoed, biting out the word one syllable at a time with a whole lotta relish.

“Yup.” Coming up on the suite that Steve shared with his team, Bucky shouldered open the door. Hopefully, at least one of the many bedrooms in the place was unoccupied. Or rather, soon-to-be-occupied. “I promised my mate I’d meet him on the battlefield.”

Rocket’s toothy grin widened. He trailed the tips of his fingers over the face of Bucky’s watch as he strode over the threshold. As Rocket sniffed the air in the room, Bucky marveled at how much a veiled reminder of a single promise could please Rocket to the point that his narrow chest puffed up. Damned adorable.

Rocket paused between the armchair and the sofa and his tail suddenly went from loose and swishy to stiff and pointy.

“What the hell!? You slept _here?”_ He jabbed a claw at the armchair. “Newsflash: this is not a bed! And why did Captain Asshat get the sofa?” Arms akimbo, Rocket scolded, “I gotta be here to make sure you find yourself an actual bed? C’mon. High maintenance is one thing but this is just--”

“Rocket.”

“WHAT.”

“I didn’t do it to piss you off.”

“I KNOW THAT.”

“Then why are you yelling at me? You know that never works.”

“Damn it. One of these days, it might.” Rocket moved toward the door on the far right and gave it a sniff before shaking his head and moving on to the next.

Bucky encouraged, “Just keep providing a stellar example of what I ought to be doing and I’ll get it right eventually.”

“You realize you are talking to me, right?”

“Who else would I be talking to?”

“And my patience is so nonexistent it’s legendary.”

“Like Drax’s famously huge turds?”

“No turd talk. Know why?” Stopping at the fourth room, Rocket inhaled long and deep before opening the door. “Because we’re going to bed now. I ain’t putting up with either Drax or his turds in our bed.”

“I second those priorities.” Bucky navigated around the coffee table and into the unused bedroom. He checked the wardrobe, the shelves, the drawers, and even under the bed. No personal belongings anywhere. Well, regardless of whoever it had been intended for -- Bucky grinned as Rocket locked the door -- the room was Bucky’s and Rocket’s now.

Bucky’s hands went to the various buckles on his gear, deftly loosening straps and checking over weapons. He made sure the safety was secure on the rifle before setting that aside across the seat of a chair. The belt with both knife sheaths got folded up onto a table. He inspected the blades -- one was in need of cleaning. (Blue blood. Freaky.) He left it out as a reminder. Then he shrugged out from under the sword.

“Didn’t use that one, huh?” Rocket asked, his claws popping through the fastenings of his smudged and singed flight suit. Both laser weapons -- the one he’d brought from Nidavellir and his personal favorite -- were laid out on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“Maybe next time.” Bucky hung the sword up by its scabbard belt on the back of the chair. Next came the shoulder harness. He replaced the clip in the handgun and put the nearly-empty one beside the soiled knife to be reloaded later. Finally, he unbuckled both hip holsters that had kept the laser rifles in place until needed.

Rocket shrugged out of the top of his jumpsuit. “Need a hand?”

“Only if it’s you offering.”

Again, that sharp-toothed grin flashed. It made heat dance down Bucky’s spine as Rocket sauntered over and both paws ran up his thighs to the crotch of his trousers.

He looked down into Rocket’s brown eyes as those amazing paws picked apart the fastenings. On autopilot, Bucky undid the closures on the jacket and shucked it off. Rocket, meanwhile, was licking his chops as he unfastened Bucky’s fly, cataloging the bruises on Bucky’s arms and torso in between hot, promise-filled glances.

“Want a shower first?” Bucky checked.

“Nope.”

“Want me to take one?”

“I want you,” Rocket drawled, “to shut up and get on the bed.”

So that was what he did, sitting down as the trousers were peeled down his thighs and lifting his feet, one after the other, for Rocket to unfasten his boots. He wiggled and kicked his way free, tumbling the boots and trousers into Rocket’s grasp for his mate to set carefully aside and then, rocking his hips, Bucky hitched his last shred of clothing down over his thighs, past his knees, and onto the floor.

Rocket growled. His dexterous fingers nimbly folded up Bucky’s underwear.

Bucky lay back with a grin. “Still interested in this arm?” he checked.

“And the guy who’s included with it,” Rocket rasped. He shrugged the rest of the way out of his jumpsuit and draped it smoothly over the arm of the chair before leaping onto the bed and stalking his way across the covers to crouch beside Bucky’s chest.

Bucky’s hands lifted, his fingers burrowing into silky soft fur. A groan eked out past his clenched jaw at the feel of Rocket in his hands. “Never gonna get tired of this.”

“Never?” Rocket drew aimless squiggles over his chest with a single claw, from one nipple to the other. “Never’s a long time.”

“You not ready for that kind of commitment?”

“Oh, I’m committed,” he growled.

And as Rocket worked him to the point of breathless abandon, Bucky could only agree. He came in Rocket’s nimble paws, gasping and mouthing whispered encouragement as Rocket came on his belly and chest. Hot and gorgeous and mind-meltingly good.

God, it was always so good with Rocket, who pushed him past his first climax onto a plateau of sensation until Bucky hardened and came again, mewling through gritted teeth, alternately clutching Rocket’s fur and flicking his splayed fingers over those sensitive ears and _Jesus God._

Forever of this would never be enough.

But they had to settle for the time they had. Bucky breathed, grabbed a corner of the sheet, absently wiped up the now-cool mess from his skin, and tumbled into slumber.

He dozed for an hour according to his watch; the sounds of other people moving around in the suite eventually roused Bucky, but he didn’t move. Not until someone jiggled the handle and then rapped on the door, startling Rocket into sitting up from where he’d been drooling on Bucky’s prosthetic arm.

“Occupied!” Rocket barked. “Park it somewhere else!”

“BRIEFING IN FIFTEEN,” Banner shouted through the door. “AND THAT’S MY ROOM.”

Not anymore it wasn’t. Bucky responded, “DIDN’T SEE YOUR NAME WRITTEN ON IT.”

Rocket recommended, “I SUGGEST YOU FIND ANOTHER.”

“Don’t worry about it, Bruce,” Steve said quietly, voice muffled by the door. “You can have mine. I’ll take the sofa.”

“Hm,” Rocket approved with a vicious grin.

But then Banner’s announcement cycled back through Bucky’s head and this time his brain processed it.

“HOLD UP,” he called. “QUILL’S BACK IN THE _MILANO?”_

“HITTING THE HELIPAD NOW,” Steve said.

Rocket warbled out a groan. “Time to manage the morons.”

Bucky rubbed the base of his ears. “I won’t tell Quill you missed him,” he murmured.

Rocket nipped the heel of Bucky’s hand and Bucky pressed a grin against the crown of his head.

They were back to being Guardians again. 


	8. Chapter 8

The suite was empty when they emerged, so Bucky nodded Rocket toward the shower and ran down to the _Milano_ to grab a change of clothes for each of them from the emergency stash in their old room. Well, Bucky’s old room. He got back with eight minutes to spare for a quick shower and some furious blow-drying.

“Don’t look -- I’m still damp,” Rocket ordered as Bucky shouldered into the room to use the facilities.

“Hands off,” Bucky scolded, brushing past a grope. “We got someplace to be.”

They were the last to arrive and Bucky’s hair was still damp. Well, whatever. He headed over to Quill, who was standing with his arm around Gamora. Drax had a consternated frown on his face which meant he hadn’t killed anyone in battle yet today. Mantis smiled when she saw him, but Bucky could tell something was wrong.

“Who yanked on your antennae?” Rocket sniped, irritated from having to rush through his clean-up routine.

“I could not stop him. Thanos.” She shook her head. “He is too strong and very determined.” She curled a hand around Bucky’s wrist in warning.

“Yeah,” Quill drawled. “The plan to separate Thanos from his magic glove -- it totally would have worked--”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t,” a sharp voice bit out from behind Bucky. He braced himself as Tony Stark deigned to share the same breathing room with him. “It’s time to stop playing nice.”

“I am assuming,” Rocket said, “that you’ve got something more violent in mind for the rematch?”

“We kill him,” Thor declared, joining the group.

Drax huffed. “Finally, a reasonable course of action.”

“Everyone!” King T’Challa announced, gesturing to the neighboring conference room and its large table within. “If you would all have a seat, we will begin.” 

As tired bodies shuffled obediently through the doorway, Rocket hung back, nudging Bucky to go ahead. The reason became clear not two steps later when he heard Rocket greet, “Stark. How ya been?”

“Oh, great. Just great. Getting married. You’re invited to the wedding, but you’re gonna need a new plus one.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“You’re not even--it’s for my wedding, fur face.”

“I’ll send you a blender. And a nice note. Bucky’ll help me write it.”

“What are you doing to me here?”

“Making you deal. So fate kicked you in the teeth. It happens to everybody. Grow out of it already.”

Bucky claimed a seat beside Mantis’ and draped his arm over the next chair. On the other side of which, Groot chose to slouch, twiddling his thumbs on his lap. Rocket jumped up into the saved seat and surveyed the faces at the table. “Who’re all these bald-bodies?”

Bucky leaned closer and pointed out the people he was pretty sure Rocket hadn’t been introduced to yet: Bruce Banner (scientist), Wanda Maximoff (worried girlfriend whose boyfriend was currently getting the Mind Stone removed from his forehead), James Rhodes (Rhodey), Sam Wilson (annoying), some kid who calls himself Spider-man (sticky--do NOT touch), Jericho Drumm (a.k.a. deadman walking), and King T’Challa. “This is his country and his palace we’re in. Try to be nice. And next to him is General Okoye. She likes my sword.”

Rocket smirked. He’d been present when Bucky had picked it out and had threatened to buy it if Bucky didn’t: _“I ain’t lettin’ you talk yourself outta this one.”_ He nodded. “At least somebody here’s got good taste.”

King T’Challa addressed the table’s occupants. “For the sake of those who are unacquainted, please state your name and, if you like, affiliation. I am T’Challa, king of Wakanda.”

So they circled the room anyway, and as they ended on _Doctor_ Stephen Strange, King T’Challa prompted, “Could you please tell us what transpired in your confrontation today.”

Bucky listened to how various areas in the Bleeker Street neighborhood of New York City had ended up as collateral damage in the midst of a sorcerer-napping (as Banner had phrased it earlier). Then came the details regarding a spaceship and a stowaway with pop culture knowledge that had come in handy. Maw, the son of Thanos who could move shit with the power of his mind, had been sucked out through the hole that Iron Man had blasted into the ship’s hull and was currently floating around somewhere in the cosmos, presumably dead.

When Strange paused for a breath, Tony Stark jumped in. “So we landed on Titan--”

“Crashed,” Strange amended.

“Brought the fight to Thanos, right? He wasn’t expecting that.”

“A fight,” Quill scoffed. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you drop a skyscraper on a guy.”

Drax objected, “Thanos is not a guy.”

Quill rolled his eyes. “Guy, dude, galactic asshole, whatever.”

“‘Galactic asshole’ will suffice,” Drax agreed.

“We had a pretty great plan to pry that gauntlet off of his hand,” Quill interjected and then started narrating, and given that Bucky was familiar with everyone’s abilities, he had to admit it had been a good use of the team’s individual strengths.

“But it didn’t work,” Stark ground out.

“Not my fault,” Quill retorted, holding up an index finger. “The guy’s got--”

“Galactic asshole,” Drax corrected.

“--a brain like a black hole. Tell ‘em, Mantis.” He cued her with a wave.

Glancing around uncomfortably, she warbled, “W…well, I--my empathic abilities--”

Bucky reached out and patted her hand, sharing his confidence. She was safe here and everyone was interested in what she had to say. Respectful. Friendly. She relaxed almost immediately. Giving his fingers a grateful squeeze, she continued, “He is totally focused upon his goal. Our surprise attack was not surprising enough for me to influence his mind.”

“You can do that?” Rhodey asked and she nodded.

“She’s pretty good at it, too,” Quill defended.

“So how did you all get out of there?” Natasha interrogated. “Or did Thanos just let you leave?”

Quill shifted guiltily. “I may have said something about buying time so the Mind Stone could be destroyed.”

Rhodey pointed out, “Well, getting his hands on the Time Stone would clear that little problem up.”

Strange smirked. “Not if the Time Stone was unattainable for the remainder of its existence.”

Drumm leaned back and grunted. “Mirror dimension.”

“Yes.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “And what about threats -- you’re telling me that’s just not Thanos’ style?”

“Oh, he tried that,” Quill reassured everyone present, “but the good doctor here is the only person I know who is 110% a dick.”

Gamora accused the sorcerer: “You invited Thanos to do his worst. Are you insane?”

“At the moment, I -- and all your friends -- are alive. You are welcome.”

Gamora bared her teeth in a silent snarl.

Bucky’s jaw clenched. Thanos hadn’t retreated because he’d been beaten; he’d gone to find himself some leverage to use against them.

_Oh, God..._

Strange cleared his throat. “Thanos’ goal is clear and simple: the destruction of half of all life in the universe.”

Sam was baffled. “I still don’t get it. Why the hell would anyone want that?”

“Because,” Strange explained, “he believes that is the only way he could have saved his home civilization from collapsing under its own environmental catastrophes.”

Steve glanced up from the tabletop. “So we’re dealing with a supremely powerful adversary suffering from PTSD.”

“Eh,” Rocket shrugged, “just call him the Mad Titan. We do.”

“I prefer ‘galactic asshole,’” Drax murmured.

“Maw is dead,” Gamora suddenly said. “And I killed Corvus Glaive myself. That leaves Cull Obsidian and Proxima Midnight.”

Natasha tonged the inside of her cheek in memory. “Proxima was hit with one of those giant wheels. She’s dead.”

“And, uh, Cull,” Banner said, leaning forward as if that would make his voice project better, “he collided with the barrier, um, for a while. Kinda blew up.” Turning to Stark, he whispered, “I’m gonna need a new Hulkbuster glove.”

“Yeah, well. It’s been a couple years. You’re due for an upgrade.”

“You said there were six children of Thanos,” Steve reminded Gamora, who nodded tightly.

“Nebula.” Gamora swallowed. “But she wants him dead even more than I do. No way is she on his side.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Sam pointed out. “Can we get her here? I mean, this ain’t over. Thanos is up there right now putting together an encore.”

Gamora’s chin angled up, stubborn and resolute. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Silence descended in a light drizzle.

Standing, King T’Challa summarized, “Thanos has three Infinity Stones. We must not allow him to acquire another. Our aim is to neutralize him. Thor, you believe your axe is equal to that task?”

“I know it is.”

“Then we must ensure that you are given the opportunity to use it well.” The king smiled. “But first, food and brief rest. Then, we will formulate a plan for drawing him in.” With a wave of his arm toward the far wall, two palace staff members opened a set of double doors, revealing a buffet, dining tables, and the tantalizing corner of what might just be a bar.

“Aw, yeah,” Rocket approved, rubbing his paws together. He was the first one out of his chair and on a collision course with the roast antelope.

Bucky got them a table with Mantis who, to Bucky’s chagrin, invited Jericho Drumm to sit with them.

“He is not our enemy,” she assured Bucky quietly, and Rocket argued back, “He’s a jerk for butting into your dreams uninvited.”

“That was not Jericho,” Mantis said and, in response to Bucky’s prompting look, tacked on, “It is complicated.”

“Complicated,” Rocket sneered, jabbing a peacock drumstick in Jericho’s direction. “That ain’t gonna save you for long, pal.”

But this probably wasn’t the time or place to throw down, so Bucky let it go. As he ate, he scanned the room, noting more than one person stepping away from the bar with something interesting in hand. From bottled soft drinks to steaming cups of coffee to the flagon of ale in Thor’s grasp.

“You want something?” Rocket asked, noticing where Bucky’s attention was focused.

Just because he couldn’t get drunk didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a drink. “I wouldn’t say no to a finger of whiskey. American bourbon. Straight.”

“What do I look like -- a waiter?”

“You look like you don’t know what to order. Get me a whiskey and try it. If you like it, order another.” Simple enough.

“Yeah, OK.” Grumbling, Rocket slid off of his seat and marched up to the bar. From the next table over, Natasha watched his progress, smiling at the smart flicks of Rocket’s tail before winking in Bucky’s direction.

“This is a first,” Rhodey remarked, stopping by Bucky’s chair. He had a fancy cup of something balanced on an ornate saucer in one hand. “A dude and a raccoon. Tell me this is a joke.”

Sam was next to him, chugging on a bottle of something carbonated. “Gotta be a joke.”

Bucky gritted out, “No joke.”

Rhodey winced. “Seriously?”

“Man, now that’s squirrelly.”

Bucky put his eating utensils aside so he could get a better hold on his patience. “You guys couldn’t figure out how to turn on the TV in this place so this is how you’re entertaining yourselves. Nice.”

“Like you can judge,” Sam lobbed.

Rhodey frowned. “Not trying to be mean here, but there’s no way this actually works for you guys. That’s all I’m saying.”

“It works,” Mantis spoke up in their defense. “Trust me. I hear it working _all the time.”_

“Jesus, Mantis,” Bucky complained as Sam slapped his thigh on a laugh and a bemused smile blossomed on Rhodey’s face. “You make it sound like we go at it day and night.”

“Well, there’s ‘often’ and there’s ‘more often,’” she informed him.

“Please stop talking,” Bucky murmured.

Sam shook his head in disbelief, pointing the neck of the bottle toward Rocket, who was perched on a bar stool with one drink at his elbow and impatiently waiting on a second to be made. “That’s what you go for, huh? Actual tail. Unbelievable.”

“Sam,” Steve said, joining the pow wow. Or the ritual burning of the effigy. “Knock it off.”

“I’m just saying, Cap: your buddy here is not normal.” His head tilted in Rocket’s direction. “That ain’t right.”

“That’s not for you decide,” Steve firmly defended. “Rocket’s a good guy.”

“Well,” Rhodey mused as his gaze moved over Mantis, then off to where Thor and Drax were gesticulating battle moves, and beyond to where Quill was letting Gamora stab morsels off of his plate. “I guess there’s more, uh, choices in space.”

“Plenty without all the fur though,” Sam insisted, giving Bucky a _what-the-fuck-man?_ look of incredulity.

Bucky caught Rocket’s eye as he collected both drinks from the bar. He sucked in a deep breath, clinging to his composure, and even from across the room, Rocket saw it. He androitly navigated his way down from the stool and proceeded to stomp over with a glower; Bucky was barely hearing what Sam was saying because he knew that look: Rocket was about to publicly claim his territory.

And Bucky wasn’t going to try and stop him.

“Here,” Rocket said, plunking the glasses down on the table and retaking his seat. “I got two kinds, which you like?”

“You tried ‘em both.”

“Yup.” Rocket turned to fully face Bucky, literally giving their uninvited guests the cold shoulder. He leaned an elbow on the table as Bucky sniffed one drink and then the other.

“That one’s scotch,” he told Rocket, nudging the peaty liquor in his direction.

Rocket picked it up, clinked their glasses in a soft toast, and gave Bucky a heartwarming wink.

His spirits instantly lifted, Bucky rallied: “Thanks for the bourbon, tiger.”

“No problem, cutie. I know you’re good for it.”

“So, like, what planet are you from?” Sam badgered, and Rocket flatly informed him, “Planet Piss Off.”

“Did, uh, Bucky teach you that one?” Rhodey asked as Sam snickered.

Bucky took a sip of bourbon, feeling the burn slide over his tongue and the fumes gently mist against the inside of his nose. It was smooth and expensive. The good stuff.

Rocket nodded thoughtfully in response to Rhodey’s question. “I think what we’re experiencing here is some kind of culture chasm. You look at me and see some dumb critter, whereas I look around and see a bunch of idiot humies--”

“Wait. What’d you call us?” Sam sputtered.

Steve supplied: “Humies.”

Rhodey nodded. “Yeah, I heard that right.”

 _“--idiot_ humies,” Bucky clarified and, with a squeeze to Bucky’s bicep, Rocket picked up where he’d left off: “Who haven’t figured out yet that they’re irritating someone who has every intention of blowing their asses outta bed with a Higgs grenade.”

Bucky gestured lazily toward Rocket’s outfit. “He’s got three on him.”

“Yes, I do,” Rocket confirmed and then concluded, “You may have guessed by now that I am that someone. Feel free to keep antagonizing us. I’ll only get that much more of a laugh outta the looks on your faces after the ‘big bang.’”

Rhodey blinked. Sam squinted. Steve was probably straining several muscles trying to keep a straight face.

Bucky flicked Rocket’s ear. “That was a good pun.”

“I punned?”

“You punned.”

“Scale of one to ten?”

“Epic,” Bucky assured him, grinning.

“See. This is why I put up with you.”

“Because I’m charming and never steer you wrong with Terran drinks.”

“Oh, no,” Rocket groused in response to Bucky’s grin. “You’re trying to be cute again. You know I hate that.”

“Liar. You can’t get enough of it.”

“I’ll show you what I can’t get enough of,” Rocket threatened, climbing over to Bucky’s seat and settling himself against Bucky’s left arm. He nosed underneath Bucky’s hair, tickling and nuzzling and licking Bucky’s neck unseen by the spectators as Bucky laughed helplessly, his heart pounding with adrenaline and his skin tingling with pure joy, Rocket’s affection easily pushing back the lurking shame and shadows.

“Y’all are seriously disturbed,” Sam declared, marching away.

“Less so now that Feather Brain over there ain’t bothering us anymore,” Rocket muttered, leaning back and reaching for his glass. He kept his rear right where it was in the crook of Bucky’s arm, though, and it brought to mind that bar way back on Outpost 9. Bucky was incapable of toning down his grin. Especially what with the casual familiarity Rocket assumed. Rocket wasn’t ashamed, and Bucky’d be damned if he let anybody make him think he ought to be.

“Sorry about that,” Steve apologized.

Natasha came out of nowhere and declared, “You two make a cute couple.”

Unimpressed, Rocket glanced at Bucky. “She’s 99% talking about you.”

“Don’t think so.”

Rhodey shook his head. “Sorry, I’m with Sam on this one. You’ve got problems, friend, if you think the Winter Soldier is cute.”

“Um, this is Bucky. _Hello,”_ Rocket snarked. “And hell yes he’s cute -- you’re cute,” he informed Bucky and Bucky figured that the whiskey was definitely working its way through Rocket’s system now. “And the Winter Soldier -- he ain’t bad, either.”

“See?” Natasha prompted. “So cute. Rocket, where you from?”

“Hell,” he answered, taking another gulp from his glass.

Rhodey frowned and Steve froze.

Natasha clicked her tongue. “That’s good for us on the battlefield, not so good for single Steve here. Looks like it’s back to square one.”

“Would you stop trying to set me up?”

“Nope.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“Yes, you were.” Looking pleased with herself, Natasha pivoted on her heel and sauntered away.

Rocket blinked and belatedly clocked the implications. To Steve, he blurted, “Wait. She wants to set you up with -- what -- my sister or something?”

“Or something,” Steve agreed. “She figures if you can work miracles on Bucky, then maybe I’m not such a lost cause. C’mon, Rhodey. Tony’s been glaring this way for the last five minutes. Go be a pal and tell him to cut it out.”

Rhodey went. So did Steve.

Across the room, Quill was at the bar, placing an order. Bucky’s gaze flicked toward his and Gamora’s table. It was empty and a slender, dark figure was just slipping out into the hall.

“I do not understand.” Mantis asked Jericho Drumm, “Why do Sam and Rhodey think Rocket and Bucky are strange? They do not know about Drax’s turds, do they?”

Bucky tuned her out. No way was he going to get roped into explaining that knotty thread of logic.

“This’s what you meant,” Rocket mumbled, scanning the room surreptitiously. “They all see me being not-a-humie type an’ then they look at you an’ they think you’re some kinda…”

From behind the rim of his whiskey glass, Bucky said, “‘Crazy’ would be the nicest way to put it.”

“That ain’t what I’m seein’.” And based on Rocket’s infuriated scowl, what he was detecting was far worse. “Can I shoot ‘em?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“They might come in handy against Thanos. Hey, Quill,” Bucky said louder, spying the man as he wandered over. “What’s up?”

He had a glass of wine in each hand and a lost look on his face. “You see where Gamora went?”

Bucky had. He was only about half finished with his drink, but didn’t hesitate to scoot back from the table. Either he’d finish it later, or he wouldn’t. The promises he’d made to Quill and Gamora separately took precedence.

“She say anything?” Bucky asked, heading for the door.

“When? No. She still won’t talk to me.” Quill’s frown was thunderous. “But I know something’s going on and it has to do with Thanos. Which was why I wanted her to stay here while we went to Titan. Keep her safe. I was hoping she’d spill the beans after we brought back the dirtbag’s head.”

And yet, as usual, his good intentions had backfired.

Rocket snorted. “‘Something to do with Thanos.’ Like that’s much of a leap. At this point, everything has something to do with Thanos.”

“He’s a popular guy,” Quill agreed with his _I’m-this-close-to-losing-my-shit_ face on. To Bucky, he accused, “You figured out what it is.”

Bucky didn’t deny it.

Quill cursed. “That damn assassin training crap. It’s like you two are on the same wavelength.”

“Makes me wanna beat up grass,” Rocket admitted darkly.

“Grass?” Bucky asked.

“Before your time,” Rocket mumbled.

“Uh, mine, too,” Quill said. “‘Cause I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“How does that make this conversation any different than all the other ones we’ve had?”

“See, I consider that an indication of your awful approach to communicating.”

“And I see it as proof that your head is full of rocks. Why’re we heading for the helipad?” Rocket asked Bucky, who put out a hand to shush both him and Quill.

“Just hang back for a minute,” he requested and marched boldly out of the doors and onto the square of tarmac. Gamora was punching in the code to unlock the canopy and didn’t bother to look up at his approach.

She said, “Don’t you have a drink you need to finish?”

“What’d Corvus say to you?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

“What makes you think--”

“Don’t,” Bucky interrupted gently. “Before the battle today, you were shaking in your boots at the thought of confronting Thanos. Now you’re charging off after him? Daring him to catch you? Either Corvus said something or you really are a Skrull.”

She hesitated to input the code she’d entered, lowered her hand, bowed her head, and whispered in defeat: “Thanos has Nebula.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do NOT think Sam is an asshole. It’s just that Sam risked his life to help Steve keep Bucky free (in Civil War) and now he finds out that the guy he kinda-sorta gave up his normal life to save has a thing for furry forest animals. Sam is so uncomfortable with all this that he just doesn’t know how to handle it.
> 
> Meanwhile, Rhodey doesn’t have the same level of investment in Bucky’s well-being. He’s curious on a professional level because Rhodey was the War Machine for years, so he cares about potential threats to his country and planet and he’s wondering just who Bucky is beyond being a Hydra-programmed killer in a spaceship that can wreck havoc. Like, just how loose is this cannon?
> 
> Natasha fell in love with Bruce Banner (who, deep down, is also the Hulk) so she understands that what’s on the inside is just as important as what’s on the outside. I’m not sure if she still loves Bruce (a lot of time has passed and a person can only take so much rejection before they lose trust), but I think she’s rooting for Bucky and Rocket.
> 
> Steve is determined to support Bucky (probably in an attempt to make up for abandoning him to Hydra for so long). In private, Steve might disagree with Bucky, but not in public. However, by now, Steve has heard enough about Rocket (through his periodic calls to Bucky over the last two years) to have gotten used to the idea of them being a couple.
> 
> BUT I have never been clear on why Strange did not sling-ring everyone off of Titan and back to Earth before the Snap happened. At this point in the film, Strange has viewed however-many million possible futures and so I guess we have to assume that the one timeline in which they win against Thanos requires the Titan-bound Avengers (Strange, Stark, Parker, Quill, Mantis, and Drax) to stay there. I would like to say that Strange just does not have a talent for interplanetary travel, but he manages it just fine for the final battle in Endgame, so... *shrug*
> 
> How does Gamora know that Thanos has Nebula? In a word: Corvus. More on this at the start of the next chapter.
> 
> I want to talk about Thanos here because we don’t see his POV in this fic: he was waiting for Gamora on Knowhere (as per canon) for a long time before he gave up and went to Titan where he learns (from Stark, Strange, and Parker) that Maw is dead. Thanos then realizes that Strange has the Time Stone and Gamora is not present. When Quill lets it slip that the longer they can keep Thanos busy on Titan, the closer the Mind Stone gets to being destroyed on Earth, Thanos uses the opportunity to retreat, knowing (from having viewed Nebula’s memories) that Quill will lead Thanos to Gamora sooner or later; Thanos lets Quill and all them THINK he’s leaving to check on the progress of the battle (where he discovers the dropships blown up, the Outriders wiped out, the Threshers useless, and three more of his children dead) BUT at this point, Thanos is actually less concerned about the Mind Stone (because despite all the damage the Avengers have caused, Thanos doesn’t believe any of them could actually succeed in destroying it) and he’s STILL focused on Gamora, who is the only remaining wildcard (after Thanos learns the location of the Soul Stone from her, acquiring the Mind Stone and the Time Stone will be easy: Thanos destroyed Xandar so he could get the Power Stone, so he can do the same to Earth if he has to). Luckily, Nebula (his leverage against Gamora) is still his prisoner. Now Thanos just has to decide his next move. He has lost the element of surprise by now and he is concerned that Gamora might do something drastic (like, end her own life) in order to prevent Thanos from acquiring the Soul Stone (so maybe it was part of Corvus’ mission to find Gamora and tell her about Nebula).
> 
> EDIT!! Thanks to some super helpful feedback, I’m adding a note:  
> The line “makes me wanna beat up grass” is a nod to the first GotG movie: after Drax gets his butt kicked by Ronan on Knowhere and the Ravagers have abducted Quill and Gamora, Groot and Drax decide to rescue them. Rocket argues for doing the opposite: taking off -- as fast as they can -- to some corner of the galaxy where maybe they can live out their lives before Ronan shows up. But Rocket is out-voted and it pisses him off and he starts kicking this poor clump of grass (don’t ask me why there’s grass on Knowhere) and he huffs and puffs, “You’re making -- me -- beat -- up -- grass!” So all that went down before Bucky came along (“Before your time,” Rocket says in this chapter) and Quill wasn’t there to hear it, so of course Quill has no idea what Rocket’s talking about.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music rec: "It Has Begun" by Starset

“Again with the rescuing!” Rocket moaned, burying his paws in the fur behind his ears and tugging hard. 

With Corvus’ dying breath, he’d sneered at Nebula’s loyalty to Gamora. He’d spat and jeered and shared the fun fact that Thanos had seen Nebula’s memories. When Nebula had recently snuck on board the _Sanctuary II_ to kill the Mad Titan, she had been caught -- interrogated and scanned and dissected -- and now Thanos knew everything from the call sign for the _Quadrant_ to the names of the crew. _Everything._

“And what does Nebula know?” Bucky carefully asked. “Everything?”

“Enough,” Gamora replied and damn it what a fine mess this was.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Quill squealed in frustration.

Gamora blatantly refused to answer. “You can’t talk me out of this. I have to get her out of there.”

“And what’s Thanos gonna do to you when he catches you!?” Quill was on the verge of panic. Pure, flaming panic.

Bucky put out a hand. “OK, say we don’t stop you.”

“WHAT THE HELL!?”

Bucky negotiated: “Instead, tell us where you need us to be. You know where this is going. Let us turn it into an opportunity. Thor’s got Stormbreaker. We can end this.”

“NO,” Quill objected. “WE ARE NOT USING GAMORA AS BAIT FOR THAT MAD ASSHOLE.”

Gamora drew a blaster and aimed it right at Quill’s chest. “Then I’ll leave you lying on the helipad unconscious. One way or another, I’m going. Nebula needs me, and you can’t stop me.”

Rocket uncrossed his arms and slapped one paw against his thigh. Wryly, he mused, “Can we at least have five minutes to round up the jackasses and read them in? I mean, what’s five more minutes?”

In the face of torture, five minutes was an eternity. Bucky knew it, Rocket knew it, and Gamora knew it.

But Nebula could be dead already and, if that were the case, then those five minutes would be time well-spent. 

Gamora nodded tightly. “Five minutes, Rocket, and then I’m launching.” 

Five minutes later, the _Milano III_ launched, and Bucky was setting foot on a planet known as Vormir.

The Bifrost desposited them in the valley between two dunes of dust-gray sand. Above, the sky was overcast, infusing the entire world with a purplish glow in the eerie light of the distant sun.

“Nice place,” Natasha assessed sarcastically.

Thor agreed. “I would not build a summer home here.”

“That is the point,” Jericho Drumm reminded them all, “of hiding an artifact like the Soul Stone on an inhospitable world.”

“Or just for the hell of it,” Rocket said because he enjoyed being a shit.

Stark hummed. “I’d build a summer home here. It’s quiet.”

No wonder Stark and Rocket were frienemies: _pain-in-the-ass minds think alike._

Scanning the desolate landscape, Drax declared, “It is a wasteland devoid of hope. A fitting place for Thanos to meet his end.”

“Let’s get moving,” Steve ordered. “Gamora may not be able to give us much of a headstart.”

Bucky reached out and patted Quill’s shoulder. “Thanos needs her alive.”

“And she needs us,” he ground out, more furious than ever that this was the play they’d decided on: one team to the location of the Soul Stone to set up an ambush, and another team, obscured from detection in a mirror dimension, accompanying Gamora to the _Sanctuary._ Once Gamora was persuaded to tell Thanos where to find the Soul Stone, Mantis and Strange would retrieve Nebula and destroy the ship with the remainder of Thanos’ forces upon it.

Simple enough.

Unless Gamora got back off the _Sanctuary_ with Nebula undetected, but no one was that optimistic. So they’d prepared for contingencies. And yet Bucky couldn’t shake the weight of dread from his shoulders. There was something about this place. A hunger in the air. The planet seemed to sniff at them. The wind scrubbed over their skin like a dry tongue, tasting.

Their destination was easy to spot at this distance: an ancient monolith of weathered stone, a mountainous tower crumbling to the point of ruins with what could only be a set of time-eroded steps up ahead. This was their cue to split up.

“Everyone got their aero rigs and spacesuits?” Rocket checked.

“No,” Thor and Stark (who was slogging along like he was navigating a bog) retorted almost in bratty unison.

Rocket rolled his eyes. “Everyone who _needs_ them?”

Heads nodded.

“I’m good,” Bucky told his lover.

“I’m counting on it,” Rocket quietly replied. He reached out a paw to touch Bucky’s wristwatch and Bucky’s fingers caught Rocket’s hand in a brief but firm squeeze.

Quill nodded for Rocket and Drax to follow him and take cover.

Natasha squared off beside Steve at the base of the steps.

Stark didn’t move. “Point Break’s gnarly rainbow wave seems to have knocked out some systems--”

Thor rolled his eyes at the nickname.

Steve sighed. “And you’re only mentioning this now because…?”

“Because it’s no big deal. Gonna need a couple seconds to reboot -- thirty, tops -- then I’m good to go,” Stark promised.

With a smirk, Thor launched into the sky to do a little recon; he would need a good vantage point for this to have a chance of working.

Bucky and Drumm skirted the base of the roughly hewn structure, looking for another access point.

What they found was a massive stone disk at the base of a sheer cliff. It was ringed by jagged peaks not unlike the slopes of a crater. They made their way toward the vertical wall of bare rock. Despite the sharpness of the exposed edges, Drumm elected not to use magic to assist him and Bucky appreciated the caution. Not that their movements were guaranteed to go unnoticed, out in the open as they were.

If this had been a casual hike, Bucky would have taken the opportunity to ask Jericho Drumm just who had been visiting Mantis in her dreams and why it was so “complicated.” But he bit the words back. They moved silently.

They reached the cliff face and Bucky scanned the craggy surface for a trail. He saw none. There was nothing for it. If he wanted to get in position behind enemy lines, then he’d either have to inch his way up by this fingertips or use the aero rig Rocket had designed.

> “These’re the stealth versions,” Rocket had said as he’d handed out the devices on the helipad. “They got thrusters, but almost no heat signature. Minimal incident light. If silence is a priority, try to take it slow; decibels increase proportionately with output.”
> 
> Stark had scoffed. “Could’ve made ‘em completely silent.”
> 
> Rocket had snarked back: “Must be nice having a lab in a fantasy land where basic rules of physics don’t apply.”
> 
> “It is, actually. I recommend it.”

Bucky signaled for Drumm to hang back and keep a lookout. Then he activated his aero rig.

Nothing happened. The aero rig was a dead weight on his chest and shoulders.

_What the hell?_

It wasn’t like Rocket to pass out duds.

Bucky’s jaw clenched. It looked like he’d be going up the side of the cliff as God and nature had intended. On the bright side, Bucky wouldn’t have to worry about keeping the thruster output level quieter than the swirling wind.

He reached out to the sheer rock and began pulling himself up, hand over hand, wedging the reinforced toes of his boots into whatever cracks and crevasses he could reach.

And he prayed. Bucky prayed that the stone wouldn’t crack, shatter, and fall with a position-revealing echo.

Bucky’s hair whipped around his neck and face as he climbed, climbed, climbed. The higher he reached, the further the edge seemed to be, but when he looked down, Drumm was only a tiny blur among black rock.

Shoulders screaming and right arm on the verge of cramping, he resumed climbing. Bucky had just gripped a sharp crag with his left hand when a strangely silent _whoosh_ seemed to suck the wind from the land. Oddly enough, it reminded him of a ship emerging from hyperspace.

Reaffirming his grip, Bucky checked his watch for Gamora’s vitals. The screen was blank. Perfectly blank. But he had a hunch that she was here on Vormir.

Which meant that so was Thanos.

Gritting his teeth, Bucky redoubled his efforts to get as close to the summit as possible.

About ten feet from the ledge, there was a slight hollow in the stone and Bucky wedged himself into it. Braced. Listened hard.

Long moments passed and then came the sound of a voice. A man. He was lecturing to someone and the cadence of those words -- the slight accent… it stirred something in Bucky’s memory. Darkness and terror and the murmur of Bucky’s own voice his only comfort, his sole link to himself in a world of fear and agony:

_“James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038…”_

Bucky’s arms flexed and the ghosts of leather restraints vanished. He blinked. Focused.

That soft, terrible voice resolved into words: “--banished me here. Guiding others to a treasure I cannot possess. What you seek lies in front of you. As does what you fear.”

And then came a voice that Bucky was very glad to hear: “What’s this?” Gamora asked, projecting her words into the abyss.

“The price,” that hauntingly familiar voice said. “The Soul holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say it has a certain wisdom.”

Another man spoke. A deep voice that could only belong to Thanos. “Tell me what it needs.”

“To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a sacrifice.”

Bucky measured each breath carefully. Waiting…

“Of what?” Thanos inquired.

“In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul.”

Bucky’s eyes widened. He glanced up toward the ledge and then down at the circle of stone -- the sacrificial altar -- at the base of the windswept tower.

Gamora laughed with sharp relief, hilarity that bordered on mania. “All my life, I dreamed of a day -- a moment -- when you got what you deserved, and I was always so disappointed. But now? You kill and torture and you call it mercy. The universe has judged you. You asked it for a prize and it told you no. You failed. And do you want to know why? Because you love nothing. No one.”

There was a telling pause and then a tortured denial. “No,” Thanos despaired.

“Really?” Gamora mocked. _“Tears?”_

The guide, the guardian, the banished Hydra commander and madman Johann Schmidt said, “They’re not for him.”

Oh, Jesus. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut as he lifted his useless watch to his lips before remembering Drumm’s instructions, given in a quiet aside before Bucky had begun his climb: _“You will not need to speak into a communicator. I have placed a monitoring spell on you. I will hear everything, even a whisper.”_

Bucky whispered now. “Thanos is here. He’s going to throw Gamora off the cliff. After I catch her, give us a mirror dimension to hide in.” Just in case.

He peered down toward Drumm and could just barely make out the movement of the man’s arm as he waved in acknowledgement.

“No,” Gamora gasped, her voice weak and distant as she retreated. “This isn’t love.”

Thanos spoke to her, reminding and scolding himself in the process, “I ignored my destiny once. I cannot do that again. Even for you.”

A scuff of soles upon stone and desperate cry -- a futile struggle -- and then--

“HEY ASSHOLE. LET GAMORA GO.”

Quill. Quill and Drax and Rocket. Face to face with Thanos. A delay tactic and distraction. This was the part of the plan that Bucky had liked least and now he liked it even less.

“Ah, you again,” Thanos mused. “The boyfriend.”

“I prefer Titan-killing long-term booty call.” And Bucky would have laughed if he hadn’t been clinging to a cliff face by his bionic fingertips. Still, only Quill would proudly answer to a moniker like that.

But in its absurdity lay the genius. Thanos was amused by Quill’s plucky attitude, flabbergasted by his lunacy, and charmed by his daring.

 _“It’s cute how hard he tries,”_ Gamora had once admitted to Bucky when speaking of Quill. _“It’s like two stars crashing into each other. You can’t look away.”_

Just like Thanos was unable to look away now.

Bucky waited for it. _C’mon,_ he urged in silence. _C’mon, Stark, blast the asshole into axe-range--_

_BOOM!_

The tower shook and Bucky stared up, wondering if he’d be seeing Thanos flying over the edge of the cliff--

“The power of the stone shields this place,” Red Skull explained patiently. “No outside attack is permitted here. Only those who have passed through the entrance may endeavor to prevent a supplicant from obtaining the Stone.”

“That,” Steve declared flatly, “is exactly what we’re here to do.”

With the element of surprise lost, Thor flew overhead, down the side of the tower toward the entrance, bellowing a frustrated battle cry.

At the top off the cliff, Steve engaged Thanos. Bucky heard Natasha grunting with effort. Rocket roared and Bucky waited for the pulse of laser blasts… but heard nothing. Drax let loose with a thunderous charge.

“LASER’S DEAD!” Rocket reported.

“AERO RIG WON’T START!” Quill roared.

“It is the electromagnetic field of the planet,” Red Skull told him mildly. “Victory must be earned with genuine effort.”

Genuine effort. Oh, God. Stark’s suit wasn’t working. Rocket’s laser rifle, Quill’s quad blasters--

_CRASH!_

_THUMP!_

A grunt, a shriek, a shout of denial as Thanos batted aside Steve, Natasha, and Drax one at a time.

And here Bucky was. Unable to do a Goddamn thing to protect them.

A familiar groan of determination: Steve pushed himself upright. Swift footsteps and a long stride: Steve sprinted toward Thanos--

The dull thud of vibranium shields hitting home--

The rumble of impact as the tower shook. A body slammed down hard against cracking stone. Either Steve or Thanos. 

_Steve,_ Bucky realized, his heart breaking when Thanos gasped quietly, “I’m sorry, little one.”

Gamora’s scream. Quill’s bellow of protest and litany of roared insults--

And then a figure was falling over the edge of the cliff and Bucky lunged from his hiding place, reaching-stretching-straining with his flesh-and-blood hand, arms and shoulders extended to their fullest, teeth gritted against the burning pain.

 _Please,_ he begged, and felt the brush of skin against his fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Correct me if I’m missing the obvious here, but it seems to me that Nebula’s capture and interrogation by Thanos was what kicked off the hunt for the Infinity Stones because, finally, Thanos had a lead on the Soul Stone -- the only stone he didn’t have a general location on.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music rec: "Die For You" by Starset  
> Because there is nothing Bucky won’t do to keep his family safe.

Gamora needed a protector like she needed a hole in the head. Bucky had figured this out pretty early on. What had clinched it hadn’t been the way she’d sliced through Sakaarans or gutted an Abilisk or even knocked Bucky on his ass in sparring.

It had been the day after Luchae.

> “Where’s Drax at?” Quill had asked. “Need some muscle down in the cargo hold.”
> 
> “You’re going to have to settle for either mine or Bucky’s,” Gamora had replied, not looking up from the engine efficiency chart that was showing a disappointing amount of wasteful red. Kraglin’s crew had been close to burning out the _Quadrant’s_ starboard engine.
> 
> “Eh? But this is like Drax’s THING,” Quill had protested.
> 
> “Not today it isn’t,” Gamora retorted.
> 
> Quill had pouted. “Well. What’s so damn special about today?”
> 
> “It’s the day after he tied a ribbon in Mantis’ hair.”
> 
> The pink ribbon. Bucky had remembered Drax’s offer to arrange it in a style that his daughter had once liked.
> 
> “I don’t--what’s the big deal?”
> 
> “For a moment, Drax let himself be a father again.”
> 
> “So? He talks about his wife and kid all--the--time.”
> 
> “That’s different.” Gamora had glanced up and given Quill a stern look. “He needs today for himself. Either ask one of us to help you move whatever it is or wait until tomorrow.”
> 
> Quill had growled (a pitiful sound compared to Rocket’s) and turned to Bucky. “Whaddaya say? Gimme a hand with sorting some old munitions?”
> 
> “Sure.”
> 
> As they’d worked, Quill had complained. About Drax. About Gamora. About whatever idiot Kraglin had put in charge of munitions storage. And again about Gamora.
> 
> Eventually, Quill had clocked the fact that Bucky’s was not a sympathetic ear. “The hell, dude. Back me up on this at least -- she’s stubborn like a--”
> 
> “Gamora doesn’t need a big brother. Doesn’t need a knight in shining armor, either. She’s no damsel in distress.”
> 
> “Oh, boy. There was this one time--”
> 
> “Yeah. One time. Stop treating her like a Goddamn fainting violet and maybe she’ll stop treating you like a toddler. Food for thought.”
> 
> It couldn’t be a coincidence that less than a month’s worth of day-cycles later, Gamora had asked Quill out on a date. Just the two of them. To RPG at a bar during a refueling stop.
> 
> Sure, Quill had backslid a couple of times (on their very next job, in fact, which had required some tricky inflitration and a dicey moment of getting captured in order to gather intel so, really, it had been asking too much of Quill to let Gamora take point on that op), but he’d gotten better at trusting her to know her limits and take care of herself, which she was damn good at. And what was more, Gamora _liked_ taking care of herself because now she could. Now, she didn’t have a tyrant dictating her every move, analyzing her for weaknesses, and ordering her to face armed combat with her own sister to prove her fitness.
> 
> “Quill’s an idiot sometimes,” Bucky had agreed after Gamora had finished ranting about his reckless stupidity. “He doesn’t know what to do with himself when he’s not needed or wanted.”
> 
> “You--that’s what that nonsense is all about?”
> 
> “Pretty sure. It’s what I used to do for Steve.”
> 
> “And did Steve appreciate it?”
> 
> “Hell, no. I drove him bonkers. He tried to enlist in the army five times -- maybe sorta because I never let him handle shit on his own.” It had only taken Bucky eighty odd years and a couple hundred brain-jarring, stomach-lurching hyper-jumps to figure it out.
> 
> Gamora had laughed softly, and then gradually sobered. “Do you think there’s hope for Quill?”
> 
> “There’s hope for all of us.”

And what do you know, Quill had figured it out (eventually). Gamora didn’t need a man to look after her. What she needed was people she could count on. People who she could reach out to when she needed a hand.

Today, that hand was Bucky’s.

Her eyes widened as she fell. Her scream died on a gasp. Bucky lurched toward her and she grabbed for his arm and never in his life had Bucky been so thoroughly and completely grateful to be a survivor of torture, a forced recipient of super soldier serum, a former lab rat with a weapons-grade prosthetic arm.

He used all of it -- every ounce of determination and strength and torque -- to grab hold and keep on holding as they both smashed gracelessly into the slide of the cliff. Bucky’s left shoulder was wailing in agony, but the metal fingers were anchored fast and deep.

“I TOLD YOU,” Thor rumbled at the top of the cliff, “THAT YOU WOULD DIE FOR THAT.”

Thanos groaned out a pained sound and somehow Bucky had missed the actual attack. Thor’s axe -- he imagined it buried deep in Thanos’ chest. Maybe splitting his rotted heart in half.

“Heh,” Thanos panted. “Heh, you…”

“WHAT,” Thor demanded on a snarl.

A tired laugh. “You should have gone for the HEAD!”

And then Bucky saw Thor hurtling through the air, blasted from the top of the tower by whatever power Thanos wielded.

There were sounds of small, loose rocks shifting from more than one position: Thanos climbing to his feet and Steve pushing himself upright. Natasha, Drax, Quill, Rocket -- all of them readying for another round that they would not -- COULD NOT -- win against a being that had just batted aside their best weapon.

“No,” Bucky gasped. “No, don’t. Rocket.” _Please don’t do anything stupid, caveman._

And then--startlingly sudden movement at the top of the cliff jammed Bucky’s heart into his throat. Bucky and Gamora, both aware of their precariously exposed position, stopped breathing.

Bucky hoped like hell Drumm had managed to tuck them both inside a mirror dimension as a massive head, thick neck, and wide shoulders leaned forward over the precipice. Thanos. He looked down, down, down, and sobbed.

Frowning, Bucky did the same and gaped at the sprawled figure of Gamora. Her skull bashed upon the stone. Long tendrills of curling hair and a puddle of dark blood.

Bucky tightened his grip on Gamora’s wrist and her fingers gouged into his arm. They shared a look, baffled.

A pulse of lightning lit the sky, illuminating streaks of pale purple clouds that formed a vast tunnel. Each stripe chugged up, up, up in a vortex with no sideways motion. Power carved deep vertical stripes into the wide ring of vapor, energy draining from the altar and into the atmosphere above--

_CRACK!_

Bucky grimaced, his ears ringing and eyes stinging.

The wind whipped through his hair, scraping sweat from his brow. He opened his eyes and looked into Gamora’s horrified expression before they both focused on the circular stone below. Gamora’s corpse was gone.

“GAMORA!” Quill bellowed, voice cracking as he stumbled toward the edge of the cliff.

“BUCKY!” Rocket belted out, sounding nearly as panicked but twice as pissed.

Gamora found her voice before Bucky did. “WE’RE HERE! WE’RE BOTH FINE!”

Two heads popped out beyond the edge of rock. Quill dived onto his belly and reached down without a word, extending his arm.

Cringing at the thought of pulling both himself and Gamora up, Bucky asked her, “Can you reach Quill? My aero rig doesn’t work.”

“Oh, my God,” she muttered. “Your arm.”

“I’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t exactly fun being used as human rope, but it beat the alternative. He ground his molars when Gamora used his shoulder as a push-off and, lunging for Quill’s hand, got herself safely on the ledge.

“Drax!” Rocket called, gesturing the man over, but it was Steve who leaned over the edge, arm outstretched.

“C’mon, Buck.”

Bucky climbed, his progress slow and painful even after Steve grabbed onto his right wrist and started pulling. A moment later, Rocket’s paws clamped on under Bucky’s left elbow and then Drax got a grip on the collar of the useless aero rig and lifted up.

For a single, terrifyingly weightless moment, Bucky was suspended over the chasm with certain death yawning at his feet. His mind blanked with horror. And then he was flopping onto cold stone like a landed fish. Mouth gaping and breathing hard.

“Thanos,” he rasped as Rocket buried a paw in his hair and clenched tight. “What happened? Where is he?”

Steve sat back on his haunches. “Anybody got eyes on Thanos?”

“I did,” Stark spoke up, slowly mounting the stairs one heavily laden step at a time in a metal suit that couldn’t fly. Not on Vormir. “From a distance.”

“What did you see?” Thor demanded.

Stark stared at Gamora as Quill rocked her back and forth. She was crying -- sobbing -- and Bucky couldn’t blame her one bit. The dual horror of learning that not only was she genuinely loved by the universe’s most ruthless lunatic but that he would not hesitate offer up her life for the sake of his plans… hell, that would wreck anyone’s day.

 _“That’s no father,”_ Gamora had once said of Ego, and Drax had replied, _“Neither is Thanos.”_

At this point, Bucky felt qualified enough to agree, adding his conviction to theirs: Thanos was no father at all.

Natasha looked around. “Where’s Red Skull?”

Steve would have paled if his skin could have gone any whiter. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yeah,” Stark confirmed. “Dude’s out of a job; Thanos has the Soul Stone.”

“HOW THE HELL IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?” Rocket snarled, clinging to Bucky’s shoulders as he sat up. God, but the left one hurt like a sonuvabitch. His next visit to Rocket’s workshop was not going to be a fun one.

“Drumm,” Bucky muttered. “Had to be Drumm.”

“Well. Let’s have a chat,” Steve decreed.

Natasha belayed it. “We might want to get back to Wakanda.”

And from there, figure out which stone Thanos was targeting next.

“Shit,” Stark spat. “Strange has the Time Stone and he’s on the bastard’s mother ship.”

“No mother would claim Thanos as her son,” Drax insisted. “Ship or otherwise.”

“Thank you, Drax,” Steve said.

Thor led the way down the ruined steps to where Jericho Drumm was just pulling himself up to the tower entrance.

“What the hell was that?” Gamora screamed at him. “I saw my body. Dead. And then Thanos got the stone, YOU MORON!”

Quill blinked and then aimed a furious glare at the sorcerer.

“The Time Stone,” Drumm insisted, “takes precedence over explanations at the moment.”

“Thor?” Natasha prompted. “Bifrost us back to Wakanda?”

“Yes.” Glaring at Drumm, he bit out, “Would that I could leave you here.”

Bucky doubted it would do any good; Drumm was wearing a sling ring.

They arrived after dark in the upturned battlefield. The Wakandan palace glowed in the distance. Bucky checked his watch. There was a message from Mantis -- _MILANO INBOUND_ \-- plus a smiley face with a thumbs up.

Mission: complete.

Quill let out a breath in relief and Bucky glanced over in time to see him lowering his own arm after reading the same update.

“Shall we?” Drumm inquired, slinging open a fiery portal right into the waiting room beside Shuri’s lab. They each stepped through.

“Uh-oh,” Bruce Banner fretted, seeing one stressed face after another. “Those aren’t the smiles of victory.”

“Thanos is still alive,” Thor informed him.

On the far sofa, Peter Parker and Groot looked up from the game consoles in their respective grasps.

Rocket groaned. “This is the time to go for a high score? REALLY?” he scolded Groot whose shoulders hunched.

“General Okoye gave them to us--” Parker began.

Stark put up a hand. “No. Don’t wanna hear it.”

“What’s the status of the Mind Stone?” Steve asked of Sam and Rhodey.

“No change, Cap.” Sam nodded toward the seemingly empty laboratory in the next room.

Wanda moved away from the windows. “Has Thanos gotten another stone?”

“Yeah,” Quill yowled unhappily. “He got another one.”

Bucky turned to Drumm. “Could we look in on the _Milano?”_

“It’s landing now,” Rhodey informed him, hitching his brows and jerking his chin toward the helipad below.

Tiredly, Steve asked Drumm to bring everyone on board through to the waiting room. Mantis, Nebula, and Strange emerged from the magical portal in the next instant.

“I did not finish powering down the computer,” Mantis apologized.

“Don’t worry about it, ladybug,” Rocket soothed her, and Bucky flicked Rocket’s ear.

“I love you,” Bucky murmured because to hell with what anyone thought.

Rocket acted as though he hadn’t heard him. “C’mere. How’s that arm?”

Bucky knelt as he worked on loosening up his jacket enough to shrug his left shoulder free and Rocket’s hands joined in. His nose close to Bucky’s ear, Rocket quietly answered, “And I love you.”

Their gazes tangled and held. Like a climber’s grasp. And this -- this was why Bucky always felt safe with Rocket. With just a look, he knew Rocket was there for him all the time, anytime. He was never in danger of falling so long as there was Rocket.

Wincing as Rocket helped peel the jacket sleeve off of his left arm, Bucky asked Drumm, “What’d you do?”

The various conversations in the room petered out until only the sound effects from the combat game that Parker and Groot were playing poked into the quiet. It had been a long day; no one had gotten any rest to speak of and tempers were short. Bucky’s included.

Bucky prodded Drumm: “After you put Gamora and I in a mirror dimension so that Thanos couldn’t see us, what’d you think you were doing?”

“You faked my death. Why?” Amazingly, Gamora still had the energy to snarl.

Mods. Had to be.

“Because Thanos had just tossed our best offensive weapon aside like it was little more than a wet towel.” He glanced at Thor. “I should have let you all continue to uselessly pelt yourselves at the monster, knowing he would not hesitate to kill you one by one?” Drumm lifted his hands in supplication. “Thanos had to believe the sacrifice had been completed. He would not have left otherwise.”

Gamora was aghast. “So you just gave him the stone?” 

“No.” Drumm inhaled deeply. “I had no expectation that the illusion would have that result. We intended to make him think he’d _failed.”_

“Who’s this ‘we?’” Quill challenged. “You got a turd in your pocket there, pal?”

“My brother Daniel and I.”

Drax reminded everyone: “Daniel Drumm is dead.”

“And yet his spirit remains. When death took his body, his soul stayed behind. His spirit was with me on Vormir and it was him on that altar, projecting an illusion. Thanos saw what we’d intended for him to see, but we did not anticipate that the Soul Stone would be fooled. It must have sensed a departing soul and Thanos believed that soul belonged to someone he loved. The terms of the sacrifice were fulfilled.”

Rocket looked skeptical. “Danny Boy’s still hanging around?”

Drumm nodded.

Mantis told Bucky and Rocket, “He is the one who has been visiting me. It has always been Daniel.”

Bucky huffed.

Waving a paw in Jericho’s direction, Rocket checked, “Can we beat this dude up anyway?”

Considering the massively massive screw-up that Jericho had if not enabled then been complacent to: “Count me in.”

“Why not just make a line?” Stark snapped, glaring at Drumm.

Meanwhile, Steve looked like he’d been smacked upside the head. It wasn’t often Captain America didn’t even know where to start.

“Look,” Rocket announced, “if that lab in there is off-limits, then Bucky and I are heading down to the _Milano.”_

“Messed up my arm, huh?”

“Just a teeny tiny whole-lotta bit. How are you not in agony right now?”

“This is my mean face.”

“Hm. You need an angry smile to pull it off.”

Bucky stretched his lips back in a humorless grin.

“Eh, maybe after I get this realigned it’ll be working better for ya.” Rocket very gingerly patted Bucky’s left shoulder. “C’mon, cutie.”

“Keep your comms turned on,” Steve requested, and Quill drawled tightly, “Yeah, we’ll let you know what else goes wrong today. Don’t wanna miss that.”

After the wringer they’d all been put through, it should have been inconceivable that the day could get any worse, but there were still two empty spots on Thanos’ gauntlet of doom and the day wasn’t over with yet.

“Repairs, huh?” Bucky muttered as the elevator zoomed down the length of the tower. “That the only reason we’re heading back to the _Milano?”_

“Well, if it’d do any good to toss your ass in the navigator’s chair and book it outta here, we’d be doing that.”

“Rocket,” he scolded.

Rocket whined, exasperated.

“You wouldn’t really leave them behind.”

“Quill, maybe.”

Bucky shook his head. He wasn’t buying a word of it.

With a sidelong look, Rocket realized he wasn’t fooling anyone, so he went on the offensive. “Thinkin’ about stuffing you in the first-aid pod, though. You’ve got some nasty swelling going on up in there.” He pointed toward Bucky’s left underarm. “You twist it or something?”

“Yeah. When I grabbed Gamora.” It had felt as if his metal arm was on the verge of popping right out.

Rocket’s building ire deflated. “Hm. I’m sorry about the aero rig. It could’ve saved you some pain and suffering.”

“Vormir was rigged,” Bucky insisted and was relieved to see Rocket rally.

“You’re damn right it was!” he agreed testily. “That place was frickin’ messed--up. Like that Red Skull dude. Talk about misuse of a sheet.”

Bucky laughed out a snort that tripped into a guffaw that had him practically rollicking against the elevator wall because the fearsome and ruthless Johann Schmidt IN A SHEET.

“What?” Rocket demanded, grabbing Bucky’s right hand and hauling him out at the ground floor. As they crossed the foyer, Rocket persisted, “WHAT’D I SAY?”

Bucky stumbled outdoors and had to lean against the side of the ship as Rocket irritably keyed in the access code to the cargo hatch. Calming enough to allow for actual speech, Bucky said, “That asshole -- Red Skull -- was the Hydra shithead commander.”

Rocket startled as the hatch began opening on a hiss. His entire body went taut. “You’re telling me,” he said quietly, too quietly, “that was that cheese-brained lunatic Yo-yo Schmuck?”

Grinning and totally inappropriately charmed, Bucky mused, “You read my file.”

“Well, yeah. What’d you think I was gonna do with it?”

“Ignore it.”

“That’s Quill’s schitck.”

“Sleep through it.”

“Drax’s.”

“Skim it?”

“Gamora.”

“Only bother to pick out the words you know?”

“Mantis. And I knew all the words, thank you very much.” Rocket stuck both fists on his hips. “Let’s _not_ do this again. We both know why I read it.”

Yeah, they both kind of did. But Bucky had to joke: “So you could come up with a plan for taking advantage of a semi-stable Terran assassin and having your wicked way with him!”

“And that’s worked out pretty good so far if I do say so myself!” And how cute Rocket was when his little chest puffed up with self-accomplishment.

But Bucky was right to have been wary of his next visit to Rocket’s workshop. Rocket had to remove the whole arm in order to look it over. The procedure poked and prodded sore muscles and inflamed tissue to the point of misting tears into Bucky’s eyes. Then, Rocket commanded him into the first-aid pod while he endeavored to reverse some of the damage to the arm itself.

“Don’t ever do shit like this again,” Rocket whispered fiercely against Bucky’s lips, and Bucky’s left shoulder was throbbing too insistently for him to do anything more than summon up a rueful grimace.

Rocket slammed the cover shut on the pod and punched in a targeted healing program, bypassing the full diagnostic scan since time was a factor and the injury was fairly obvious. Bucky tracked his mate’s anger-fueled movements with a soft grin, readily mirroring Rocket when he delayed his return to the workshop long enough to press one paw to the glass and watch over Bucky until the anesthetic took effect.

He opened his eyes alone. The clock that had been jury-rigged on the inside of the capsule indicated that just under two hours had passed. Bucky rotated his shoulder, daring more strenuous motion when he didn’t even feel a twinge of discomfort. He hit the release button and swung himself out into the cargo area, stepped into his boots and reconnoitered the lower deck.

The door to Rocket’s workshop was open and Bucky made a little extra noise on approach so that the short-tempered genius with the plasma tools wouldn’t be startled.

He wasn’t.

“Took ya long enough.”

Bucky teased, “You missed me.”

“But my aim is gettin’ better. Get in here. Sit down.”

With a slight frown, Bucky did. He wasn’t entirely sure why Rocket would want him seated on the stool at this point in the proceedings: his arm was still clamped in a pair of vises as Rocket soldered the connections. The answer came as soon as Bucky was balanced on the room’s only chair: Rocket climbed down from the tabletop and into his lap, kneeling on Bucky’s thighs and curling his tail up under Bucky’s right arm in a bid for simple contact. Bucky reached around and splayed his hand across Rocket’s belly, bracing him away from the table’s edge.

“Am I in your way like this?”

“You are exactly where I want you,” Rocket assured him, sparks arcing through the air and (Bucky imagined) reflecting off of his goggle lenses.

Bucky scrunched down, pressing his forehead to the back of Rocket’s skull as he worked. Just breathing and trying not to be a clingy nuisance in the aftermath of a close call.

“Almost got it,” Rocket reported and Bucky nodded. He wished he could say there was no hurry, but Thanos wouldn’t be sitting around admiring the new addition to his gauntlet for long.

Still, it was nice to just sit here, feeling Rocket’s weight and soft fur and warmth, the constant energy and the wiry strength that never failed to kick Bucky in the head whenever he saw Rocket effortlessly lift something double his own weight. His old laser cannon came to mind and that smooth hitch of Rocket’s shoulder every time he angled the bulky weapon up for firing constantly impressed Bucky six ways to Sunday.

If this had been a lull in any other mission, they’d have been tearing each other’s clothes off by now. Being this close and this hyped up on adrenaline was pure temptation and total motivation rolled into one hot mess. But if they fell into bed now, it would be out of desperation and fear. Two things Bucky refused to let anywhere near their bed.

“Just…” Rocket hummed. “Just about…”

Bucky’s watch beeped with an incoming message where it was still strapped onto his disembodied left arm. He stretched out his right hand and accepted the call with a flick of his fingers.

“Yeah, Quill?” Seeing that it was a video call, Bucky transferred it to the workshop monitor. The sight of Vision standing upright was a welcome one… even if he was in the middle of kissing Wanda senseless.

“Guess what,” Quill invited with a rueful grin and silly eyebrow wiggle.

“I’m guessing the procedure was a success.”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘success.’”

“Because he’s not red anymore?” Vision’s skin was now a flat gunmetal gray. He was wearing a set of soft clothes like what Bucky had put on before going under in cryofreeze: Wakandan hospital PJs.

Quill shrugged. “Can’t fly anymore. Can’t shoot laser beams. Can’t think himself up some flashy duds and cape. He’s just your average vibranium dude now.”

From just out of camera range, Drax said, “Yes. That is a dude.”

“So now Wanda’s going to be destroying the stone,” Bucky sussed out.

“And that,” Quill said, “is where we’ve run into a problem.”

“She can’t do it?”

“Hasn’t tried yet. When the stone blows, it could take out the lab and half the tower. Even taking it outside could be iffy. And if we lock her up in a mirror dimension with it…”

Rocket filled in the blank: “Splat.”

“Which is why--” Vision leaned back long enough to clearly enunciate. “--that is most definitely _not_ a plan I support.” 

Bucky overheard Stark tossing in his two cents: “We need to put you in a suit of armor, kiddo.”

Steve sounded like he was at the end of his rope: “Why is a suit of armor your answer to everything?”

“Um, because it works. Obviously.”

Rhodey agreed. “And it’s awesome.” 

“Can I have one?” Sam begged, and Steve accused: “Traitor.”

Bucky smothered a laugh against the side of Rocket’s neck, but pushed past the humor quickly because they were on a schedule here. If the lab was no longer hidden in a mirror dimension, then Thanos might just be able to detect the stone’s location. Even if Hamir had tucked the freed Mind Stone away lickity split, there was a chance it had been a brief blip on Thanos’ radar.

Shuri stomped past. “Point me in the direction of the banquet, brother. I could eat a dead hippopotamus!”

T’Challa mused, “Would you like me to ask the chefs to add that to the menu?”

“What’s the aim here?” Bucky checked as Shuri’s hunger pains prodded everyone else’s and bodies started migrating from the room. “Are we destroying the stone or using the stone to destroy Thanos?”

“Is that an option?” Natasha asked as all tangent conversation immediately ceased.

Bucky shrugged. “Isn’t that why you’re calling?”

“Yeah,” Rocket volunteered before having to suffer through any idiot-made questions, “it’s conceivable I got something that could amplify the thing and stick it to the Thanos-killer. Like what Ronan did with the Power Stone and that adorable head-smasher of his.”

“I like where this is going,” Quill enthused, “except we blew up the head-smasher with the rebuilt Hadron Enforcer and got the Power Stone back.”

Thor said, “It is a risk we must take.”

“Risk, yeah,” Rocket muttered. “You lose that bet, and we’re one pompous dickbag sorcerer away from Thanos havin’ the whole encyclopedia.”

“The whole what?” Sam asked.

“He means enchilada,” Rhodey supplied.

Rocket slammed the tool in his grasp down on the worktable. “WHAT’S THE FRICKIN’ DIFFERENCE?”

“Well, taste, for one,” Banner answered.

Rocket squinted skeptically. “You think you encyclopedia-eaters can survive by yourselves for the next two minutes? Got an arm to reattach to a programmable assassin, and I would like to be able to concentrate.”

Quill snickered. “Yeah. See you in a few.” The connection winked out.

Rocket’s irritation vanished. He flipped the vise levers open and lifted out the arm. “Here we go,” he said in a sultry tone that made Bucky think of warm pillows and midnight snuggles. “This’ll feel better goin’ back in. I promise.”

“Jesus, Rocket.”

“What?”

“WHAT,” Bucky repeated. “Don’t use that Goddamn tone to talk to me like that or I will come in my pants.”

Rocket paused, replayed his previous comment, and smiled an evil grin. “Promise?”

Bucky growled at him and, hissing out a chuckle, Rocket reinstalled his left arm. The last time Bucky had gone through this process had been about half a year ago when the timing of the joints had started going out of synch, bit by bit. And it didn’t matter how often Rocket had to detach it for repairs and adjustments; each time Bucky got his arm back was a revelation.

He made sure Rocket knew how thankful he was, rubbing those fuzzy ears with his fingers and that whiskery muzzle with his lips and beard. _“I could pay you in units,”_ Bucky had once teased, _“but money can’t buy you love.”_

So Rocket had opted for the love. Smart guy.

The Earth’s most obstinate defenders had commandeered the dining room. The moon had risen over the desolate and torn up meadow where they had fought for their lives and the fate of the universe. (God, how could it still be the same DAY?) It was pretty much a given that the meeting to hash out how to draw Thanos in would be happening sooner rather than later, assuming they knew where the son of a bitch was or could agree on how to get his attention. So it was a good idea to sit down and eat while they had the chance.

Rocket scanned the vicinity as they sauntered up to Quill who was opting to stand. _Star-Lord of all he surveys._ “Where’s Gamora an’ Nebula at?”

He shrugged. Picked at the contents of his plate. Low carb, low cholesterol. He was taking this new commitment to dieting seriously. “Around. Y’know. Doing girl stuff.”

“That means they kicked you out when you started getting nosy.”

“They did not.”

“Yeah, they did.”

Bucky smirked. “There’s a bootprint in your ass.”

Quill squawked. “Is not!”

Rocket blustered at Bucky, “What the hell you lookin’ at Quill’s ass for?”

“For bootprints.”

“...oh. OK.”

“HEY ASSHOLES CAN WE FOCUS, PLEASE?”

Rocket’s brows quirked. “I thought you liked it when people focused on your ass.”

Bucky played the innocent card: “Or is there some other reason you so often make an ass of yourself?”

“I hate,” Quill informed them in tandem, “both of you. So much right now. Tag-team insults are not allowed on the captain.”

“I thought Rocket was the captain.”

“Hey, works for me.” Rocket dug out a mess of wires from his waist pouch and held them out to Thor, who had spied their arrival and was now purposefully striding over. “And this should boost your defective Thanos-killer that ain’t been killing any Thanoses.”

“Thank you, Rabbit.” Thor’s tone was almost terse and Bucky was sure the Asgardian was intending the name as an insult this time.

“What is a rabbit?” Rocket asked Bucky, right on cue.

“No stripes, no fangs. Ten percent claws, fifty percent ears, lots of fluff in between.”

Quill looked surprisingly impressed despite supposedly hating Bucky at the moment. “That’s actually a pretty good description.”

Well, Bucky’d had a lot of practice at describing Earth things to Rocket over the years.

Rocket leveled a sharp claw on Thor. Crotch height. Glaring up at the pirate-angel, he gritted out, “I gave you an eyeball.”

Bucky snorted out a laugh. “Not the one you smuggled off Contraxia?”

“The same.”

“Did he wash it first?”

“Nope.”

Bucky grimaced.

To Thor, Rocket vowed, “What Rocket giveth, Rocket can repo. With interest.” His meaning was fairly clear given how close that claw was hovering to the pirate-angel’s codpiece. One way or another, Rocket would restock some balls. Of one variety or another.

“Looks like somebody didn’t read the fine print,” Stark, eavesdropping on his way to the array of fried delights, said with a smirk.

Thor rumbled, “If I apologize for calling you a rabbit, would you kindly instruct me in the use of this… this,” he concluded, gesticulating with the floppy tangle of wires.

Rocket said he would and Thor sincerely apologized and so Rocket showed him how to attach the woven circuity to Stormbreaker’s blade.

“Probably only going to get one shot at this,” Rocket warned him. “With the amount of energy being amplified through this getup, it’ll burn itself out real quick.”

“I can be quick.”

Bucky bit his tongue because even he wasn’t cruel enough to insult a man’s endurance.

Natasha was. “So is that why you guys broke up?”

Steve was very obviously trying not to laugh. “I can’t take you anywhere,” he complained. To Hamir, he said, “Stay close. As soon as we get word on where Thanos is, we’ll need to get there and Thor will need the stone.”

Hamir nodded and returned to his meal.

As Stark, Thor, Steve, and Natasha drifted away to speak with Rhodey, Banner, T’Challa, and Wanda respectively, Drax moseyed over.

He said with startling perception, “The pirate-angel’s axe was not designed to accommodate an Infinity Stone.”

“Yeah,” Rocket agreed, crossing his arms. “I don’t like our chances, but it’s not like we’ve got much of a choice at this point.”

Quill drew a deep breath. “Well, the good news is even a guy -- _galactic asshole_ \-- like Thanos has to sleep sometime.”

That was true. Bucky nodded. “If we can’t kill him before we manage to get our hands on the gauntlet, then we do it after.”

“After?” Rocket looked up at Bucky and, in response to the slow hitch of Bucky’s brows, Rocket shook his head, biting back on what could only be a wave a terror. “It ain’t gonna come to that.”

“To what?” Drax wanted to know.

“Plan B,” Quill elaborated with no details whatsoever. With a pat to the man’s shoulder, Quill steered him toward a large platter of something that looked a lot like baklava.

Rocket’s fist clenched in the fabric of Bucky’s trousers. He whined and Bucky backed into the nearest unoccupied chair to sit down. He tugged its vacant neighbor over so that Rocket could lean against Bucky’s side without having to use Bucky’s arm as a seat.

A paw threaded into Bucky’s hair and claws scraped his nape. Tilting their brows together, Bucky told Rocket, “You’re right. It’s not gonna come to that. We got this.”

Rocket met his gaze. “You’re damn right we do.”

Bucky pressed a smile against Rocket’s temple and Rocket leaned into it… until the contents of Bucky’s plate caught his attention. “Hey, you planning on eating all that by yourself there, cutie?”

He handed over the spare spoon he’d picked up. “Nope.”

Bucky was just finishing his half of some sort of rice and savory sauce combination when General Okoye crossed the room to speak into King T’Challa’s ear. When he straightened, his expression was deathly solemn. “My friends, Thanos has just destroyed the city of New York.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first Captain America movie, Steve insists that he’s got as much of a right (and a duty) to fight as the next guy, which is why he’s so insistent about volunteering for the Army. I think a lot of that comes from Bucky’s over-protectiveness. Steve is tired of being treated like a dude-in-distress. He sees Bucky “being the man” and wants that sense of capability for himself. It might also help explain why he was so dead-set against signing the Accords in Civil War. 
> 
> I am not a reader of the comics, but (apparently) even though Daniel Drumm dies, his spirit remains behind, and he is very strong -- capable of possessing other people, even. He and his twin brother Jericho work together like this at times (I think), so that is where I’m getting this whole spirit!Daniel concept from although I am embellishing A LOT.
> 
> The games that Groot and Peter Parker are playing are the Wakandan version of warrior self-study aids (specifically designed for female warriors who are in their final months of pregnancy and, thus, cannot engage in rigorous training -- I mean, Okoye has kids and still kept her rank of No. 1 Badass so it could be a thing). So the games are actually educational and guaranteed to up your badass. Too bad Tony was in a snit and didn’t let Spidey explain.
> 
> In Infinity War, Rocket tells Quill that he is “one sandwich away from being fat” and Quill promises to “commit” to dieting.
> 
> Thor loses an eye in his fight against his sister Hela (at the end of Ragnarok) and Rocket offers him a spare, prosthetic eyeball while they are on their way to Nidavellir. When Thor immediately pops the eyeball in, Rocket winces and says, “Ooh, I would have washed that first” because in order to smuggle it off of Contaxia, Rocket had to hide it very well, uh, somewhere... (We are left to guess exactly where because his comment is interrupted.)
> 
> I chose New York because this was where Loki launched his attack (in the first Avengers movie) and also it’s where Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian came for the Time Stone. So if Thanos had access to that information, he would assume it’s a location of strategic significance. The other “candidates” were London and Hong Kong because of the sanctums located there and I think Thanos would be drawn to those powerful places. I assume the Infinity Stones that Thanos already has in his possession enhance his sensitivity to things like that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanvid rec: "Bucky Barnes | Black" edited by MockingJamie  
> ("Black" performed by Kari Kimmel)  
> https://youtu.be/_RDlowAlCtg

There was nothing left. Under a high noon sun sprawled a dusty crater so deep that didn’t even smoke or spew muddy water from broken pipelines. On the eastern horizon, murky ocean water gushed inland, forming a barren harbor.

“Oh, my God,” Quill exhaled, breath thin.

Drax scowled. Mantis looked confused. Groot crouched down and pressed his palm to the scorched earth.

“Looks like someone took a bite out of your planet,” Rocket glumly commented.

Bucky swallowed hard and then rasped, “My old neighborhood is gone.” Rocket’s claws brushed across Bucky’s palm before his small, strong fingers wrapped around Bucky’s thumb. But Bucky’s reaction wasn’t the worst.

There were tears in Steve’s eyes. Fury in Sam’s.

Peter Parker was swaying on his feet and it was only Tony Stark’s grip on the kid’s shoulder that was keeping him from toppling over.

Rhodey surveyed the massive hole. The War Machine, Bucky had heard he’d been called back when he’d still been on active duty and, seeing the look on the man’s face now, the moniker was fitting: he looked ready for war.

In the Hulkbuster, Banner moved to stand next to Natasha. He couldn’t offer a flesh-and-blood hand but she briefly gripped the wrist of his suit’s metal arm.

“Wong,” Strange bit out to Drumm. “Do we know if Wong got out?”

Drumm did not.

“I can’t,” Stark said, his voice cracking. “I can’t get a hold of Pepper. She’s not picking up.”

“Something tells me a lot of calls are going unanswered,” Thanos told him and they all turned.

Their adversary pushed himself up from the boulder he’d seated himself upon. Grief dragged at what would have been a grin of superiority and certain victory. The cost of the Soul Stone had evidently amounted to more than Gamora’s life.

“Give me the two remaining stones,” Thanos somberly commanded. “There’s no need for entire cities to be destroyed.”

It wasn’t an empty threat. He could do it; here was the proof. And he would keep doing it until the Earth was a wasteland with only tiny islands of humanity struggling on in isolation as illness or hunger or injury claimed those as well.

At best, it would be the end of civilization. At worst, the extinction of an entire species.

“We’re not going to let you destroy any more lives,” Steve promised Thanos, who smiled sadly.

“There is no other solution.”

“Yeah,” Stark barked, “because you’re ignoring all the reasonable options. Because you have to be right. Because if you’re not right, then your whole world went to shit and there was nothing you could have done to stop it. Your great plan? It’s your bedtime story. It’s what helps you sleep at night. And it’s _wrong._ Hokum. BULLSHIT!” Stark paused, panting. “And that’s what you can’t live with. But you know what? We can. And we will. You’re going down, you walking-talking Trojan prune.”

Thanos the Trojan prune. Jesus. Bucky silently begged, _Please don’t let that go down in the annals of galactic history as humanity’s last words._

“What’s a prune?” Rocket wanted to know and Bucky told him because if this was their last stand, then everybody ought to be able to appreciate it to its fullest: “Month-old wabi fruit.”

“Ah. And the Trojan bit?”

“A reference to flashy armor.”

“Huh. OK. That’s a pretty good likeness,” Rocket muttered, hitching the laser rifle up from the crook of his elbow to his shoulder.

And Bucky allowed himself a tiny, miniscule moment of mirth because of course Rocket would think that.

“This will not end well.” Thanos squared his shoulders. “But so be it.”

The unfinished gauntlet flashed in the sun as he thrust it out towards the kid, Peter Parker. Stark shoved him aside, putting himself in the path of the energy blast.

It knocked him back, tumbling Iron Man like a wad of aluminum foil in the wind.

“Mr. Stark!” Peter called.

“Focus, kid,” Rhodey ordered, launching the War Machine in tandem with the Hulkbuster.

Both were easily batted aside by Thanos, but their charge had concealed Steve’s and Drax’s.

Steve dived under a swinging arm and smashed his Wakandan back scratchers into bare skin -- Thanos’ bicep and underarm where the armor didn’t reach.

Roaring, Drax stabbed at the Titan’s knees and hamstrings with furious determination. Over and over until he was kicked away.

By then Natasha had pounced -- sliding in like she was diving for homebase, firing two pistols -- and Sam, overhead, was letting loose with a spray of bullets.

Thanos snarled, fisted the gauntlet, and the crater beneath their feet creaked and rumbled.

“Here we go,” Rocket said, angling his back to Bucky’s. They both readied themselves for the onslaught. Quill lifted a laser rifle to his shoulder.

Thanos’ hordes of Outriders had been destroyed with the _Sanctuary,_ but now he created more. Creatures burst out of the earth, howling and snarling. They rushed Quill, Bucky, and Rocket, who opened fire.

_POP! POP-POP!_

Pinpoint-focused laser blasts did no good -- the dirt simply filled the holes left in the wake. The monsters didn’t even break stride.

“SWITCH TO WIDE PULSE!” Rocket roared; Bucky’s fingers were already complying, resetting the rifle’s attack mode.

Parker screamed and Bucky swung that way, blasting away at three creatures that were converging on both the kid and Stark, who was getting to his feet way too slowly.

“What the hell’s wrong?” Bucky bellowed and Parker shouted back: “That glove thing fried Iron Man!”

Well, didn’t that just figure.

“COMMS ARE DOWN!” Quill updated everyone, just in case nobody had noticed the ominous silence in their ear-piece communicators yet.

_BANG-BANG-BANG!_

Wave-like laser blasts struck the advancing beasts, pushing them back and scattering heads and forelimbs only for them to reform and continue their advance.

Quill bleated, “HOW IS THANOS EVEN DOING THIS?”

“It’s the Reality Stone,” Strange replied, repelling creatures with wide, sharp gestures of his arms.

“I thought that was just supposed to be a hologram. These things are a little more interactive.”

Drumm answered, “The Soul Stone gives them life.”

“SON OF A BITCH.”

In between trigger pulses, Bucky was trying to keep an eye on Mantis as she bobbed and weaved, looking for an opening to get to Thanos and use her powers to make him docile. The fact that she’d attempted that exact maneuver on the planet Titan meant that Thanos could see the strategy a mile away and he was using the gauntlet to warp his immediate space so that, as Steve leaped up to strike, the distance between them stretched out and Steve was suddenly too far away for the blow to hit home. Instead, it was Thanos’ foot that caught Steve in the belly, and Steve rocketed right into the path of the beasts.

Damage control. That was what Bucky, Rocket, Quill, Drumm, and Strange were reduced to as the slathering army kept rising up from piles of dust, kept coming, and Thanos continued tossing their allies into the fray.

The only reason Thanos wasn’t using lethal force, Bucky knew, was because he believed that one of them could lead him to the Mind Stone. And their only advantage was that he did not know who that person was.

The monsters were a calculated strategy: if they cornered someone that the others rushed to defend, then Thanos would know his target.

But Thanos wasn’t the only one who had come up with a battle plan:

 _“This is gonna be rough,”_ Steve had warned them all back in Wakanda as they’d assembled, prepared to step through a sling ring portal that would deposit them directly into New York City. No recon. No warning. They’d be sitting ducks.

Steve had continued, _“And it’s only going to get rougher. People are dead. Maybe people we know. You’ve gotta be up for this. Everybody -- all in.”_

Stark had put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. _“The Wakandans would be overjoyed to have you test some video games for them. Stay. Sit this one out.”_

Parker, whose aunt was very likely among those lost, had objected, _“This one could be the last one. I’m coming with you guys. I’ll--I’ll keep it together, Mr. Stark. I won’t let you down. I promise.”_

Stark had hesitated and, in his eyes, Bucky had easily seen fond exasperation -- because it wasn’t Parker’s failure that worried Stark; it was his own.

Hopefully, someday, Peter Parker would figure that out. This fight was for that -- for a chance at a future where Peter Parker was alive to receive that epiphany.

Steve’s instructions had been clear: _“Put on a brave front -- we’re all going to be emotional and we want Thanos to see that. Our play is to make it look like we’re falling apart, disorganized, every person for themselves. Let him think we’ve been blinded by anger and we’ve lost our sense of unity. That’s when he’ll let down his guard, and when he least expects it -- that’s our one shot.”_ To Thor, he’d said, _“Make it a good one.”_

 _And make it soon,_ Bucky silently urged.

Thanos had fallen into a pattern of defense-and-attack. The efforts of Rhodey and Banner, Natasha and Sam, Steve and Drax, and now (finally) Parker and Groot were working in concert, hoping to wear down Thanos’ strength. But rather, it was his patience that was fraying as he focused on the buzzing cloud of single-minded nusances, keeping an eye on Mantis whose sting would be the most keenly felt of all.

Stark wasn’t moving although he was upright and facing the action. Probably busy trying to reboot his suit. So far, only Sam had managed to dodge the full force of similar energy blasts, but Thanos was close to snapping.

“Cover me,” Strange ordered and Bucky widened his range. Beside him, Rocket also adjusted to compensate for the loss of an attacker along the line they were stalwartly holding.

Drax threw himself at Thanos and Steve scrambled to join the attack, intent on keeping Thanos too busy managing their onslaught to redirect his summoned army to flank the snipers and sorcerers.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Thanos turn his back.

He saw Strange rotating his arm in a wide circle.

He saw a fiery portal spinning wide, wider, wider--

Gritting his teeth, he kept his focus trained on Thanos’ unkillable creations as the _Milano_ roared through directly from Wakanda.

Thanos’ combatants reared back and Thanos himself, just now anchored by spider webbing and thick roots, twisted to look back over his shoulder.

The ship plowed into him. Gouged a trench in the dirt.

The beasts evaporated.

Thanos was down and vulnerable.

The aft cargo hatch had already been opened and from there Wanda emerged, her hands thrust forward and deep, red currents of power radiating toward the sprawled Titan. Her face tensed into a grimace as the cost of her efforts increased.

Thanos struggled to push himself up off the ground to his knees--

Thor shot through the still-open portal--

Drawing upon his power, Thanos managed to break through Wanda’s spell. He turned to face Thor--

Thor disappeared. A mere illusion of the sorcerer concealed aboard the _Milano:_ Hamir.

The real Thor launched from inside the battered spaceship and grappled with Thanos, wrapped his arms (of Cotati metal fibers) around the Titan’s throat while Wanda renewed her assault, commanding the gauntlet to stay open.

“NOW!” Thor roared, tightening the headlock.

Stormbreaker glowed. The Mind Stone hummed and pulsed in its setting of thin wires crisscrossing the axe blade. Vision lifted the weapon and raced toward his victim: Thanos, sentenced to death.

 _“I am on the side of life,”_ Vision had assured them all at the onset of this mission. _“I take no pleasure whatsoever in ending a life, even that of Thanos, but he must be stopped. He has left us with no other alternatives.”_

Tears streamed from Vision’s eyes as he drew near--

“NO,” Thanos commanded.

The axe gleamed overhead and fell with a mighty thrum of energy that reverberated in Bucky’s breastbone--

A flurry of motion. The gauntlet rising up to meet blade’s edge and suddenly EVERYTHING was illuminated in bright, awesome light.

_BOOM!!_

The blast tossed Bucky off of his feet, sent him crashing into the rubble and shoved him back, back, _back!_ He grabbed at the loose soil and rocks with his left hand, digging his fingers in and trying to slow himself.

Too many breathless, heart-pounding seconds later, he did.

He rolled up onto his feet.

He gaped.

The _Milano_ was almost overturned, tumbled at least a hundred yards from where it had crash landed.

Bucky’s allies were scattered. The Hulkbuster wasn’t moving. Neither was Stark or Rhodey.

Natasha gained her feet next and, focusing upon something at the epicenter, she took off at a hard run, face set with determination as she raced toward it.

And then Bucky was matching her strides, sprinting toward Thor’s prone form and Vision’s sprawled body. Stormbreaker had been thrown back into the air and now stuck up out of the earth, blade buried deep. But Natasha wasn’t going for the dropped weapon. She, like Bucky, was focused on what lay between Thor and Vision. A single, bright point of yellow light.

The Mind Stone. Loose. Lying on the ground.

Thanos, flat on his belly, reached out for it--

Bucky was too far away. So was Natasha. He braked to a halt, lifing the laser rifle to his shoulder and -- oh God, this blast would hit Natasha, too, but what could he do THANOS MUST NOT GET THE STONE--

He depressed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened because the blast had rendered the rifle useless.

Natasha threw a knife toward Thanos’ outstretched hand--

Bucky reached for his pistol--

The knife struck home and Thanos faltered for one too-short second--

Bucky thumbed off the safety and lined up the shot--

Thanos’ fingers closed around the stone and even though Bucky fired and kept firing and even though he was hitting each mark, it didn’t so much as delay Thanos from bringing both hands together and dropping the Mind Stone into place.

_No._

Bucky would have said it -- shouted it -- if he hadn’t believed what his eyes had just seen, but he did. He did believe it as the gauntlet glowed and screamed with power, because this moment had been inevitable. But that fact didn’t make their resistance an obligatory token effort: Bucky had fought -- all of them had fought -- because there was no way of knowing just how slim their chance of success was until they tried.

And failed.

Thanos roared in pain and victory in equal measures.

He got to his feet. Rolled his shoulders. Renewed and revitalized and every bruise, every scrape, every stab wound and drop of blood -- none of it mattered now. With the fifth stone, his sense of purpose overwhelmed whatever injuries he’d sustained and, conversely, Bucky felt a grim sense of dread harden his soul.

This battle was done. It was over now because all that was left was the Time Stone and, thanks to their meeting on the planet Titan, Thanos knew who carried it.

_Plan B it is._

Bucky rounded on Strange. He shouted a sudden, desperate thought: “Use it! Stop him from making the Goddamn gauntlet!”

Strange didn’t move. He stared hard at Thanos, who returned the inscrutable look.

“You know I will not hesitate to kill your friends or carve out your cities from the face of the planet.” Thanos held out a hand. “Give me the Time Stone.”

Stange’s mouth tightened. Panting with exhaustion and smudged with dirt from head to toe, he said, “Give me your word that you will cause no further harm to this planet.”

“WHAT!!” Rocket shrieked and Bucky was finally able to spot him at a distance: disheveled brown fur among sifted brown dirt.

Strange continued, “Destroy no more cities. Leave our fates to the stones. And I will give it to you.”

“No tricks?” Thanos warily stipulated.

“No tricks.” With a twist of his uplifted hand, Strange revealed a small, glowing, green gem from seemingly thin air. It hovered above his palm in invitation and offering.

“NO!” Steve hollered thinly, winded either from the blast or the sudden capitulation. “STRANGE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

Damage control. That was what this was. Because in order for Thanos to be defeated, he would first have to win. This was the contingency that Bucky had resisted for so long despite knowing its truth. That moment aboard the _Milano_ when he’d realized what they were up against -- when he’d realized the gravity of the secret that Gamora kept -- the Army sergeant in him had seen two paths ahead:

Say they prevented Thanos from obtaining the power to destroy life with a snap of his fingers, they still risked being stuck with a monster too powerful to kill. A partially completed gauntlet would only further enable Thanos to halve populations with greater ease and efficiency. Given that he had been unstoppable thus far, Bucky anticipated an agonizingly fruitless and unending series of battles as Thanos outlived them all, continuing methodically onward in his campaign, planet by planet. Bucky had worked too hard at redeeming himself to just sit back and let that happen.

But suppose they allowed Thanos his mighty weapon. They might conceivably have a moment in which to wrest it from his grasp before he wielded its power. A sliver of an opportunity. But the risk… oh, God the risk.

Which was the lesser evil, Thanos with an incomplete gauntlet or a completed one? Neither.

Which held the greater possibility of ultimate success? Only one. This one.

But if Thanos didn’t believe the fight was done, if he suspected that they had planned maneuvers beyond this moment, it was game over.

So Bucky lined up Strange in his gun sight. “DO NOT MAKE ME DO THIS.”

There was a sympathetic tilt to Thanos’ smile. “The sorcerer understands what is at stake. The Mind Stone. It speaks to me. It tells me your planet -- the three sanctums… well, two now -- are all that hold back the Dark Dimension. It is time to choose: half of the life in the universe or none of it. What I offer is kinder by far.”

“It is kinder,” Strange replied tightly, “only to those who perish in blissful ignorance.”

“And to the next generation,” Thanos confidently argued. “Children who will never know the pain of bellies that ache with hunger. They will never wallow in filth that spreads disease. Never huddle in the rubble left by wars that shed blood but offer no rewards. Think of the future. Invest in the survival of life. Give me the stone, sorcerer.”

With a wave of his hand, Strange did.

Denials erupted. Screams and shouts. Gun shots. Drax raced toward the stone as it sped through the air, but there was no way he’d be able to reach it in time. And even if he did, there was no way he’d be able to stop it from reaching its ultimate destination.

 _It is done._ Bucky knew it even as he fired bullets at Strange, aiming wide and emptying the clip. Putting on a farcical show of clinging to one last hope: if Strange were incapacitated, perhaps the stone would fall to the ground. Thanos had to believe that Bucky acted on the slim chance that Thor or Vision or Wanda would be able to intercept the stone, and then Drumm or Hamir would be able to reverse time -- just a few weeks -- and make sure the gauntlet was never created.

The desperation was real if only because Bucky knew they had to fail in order to have a hope of victory.

Thanos lifted his hand and the stone slid into his grasp.

His smile widened.

He placed it upon the gauntlet.

_WHOOSH!_

Bucky pushed through the shockwave. Everyone raced forward, even Strange.

They now had one impossible shot at winning _before_ the universe first had to pay the price.

“KEEP HIM FROM USING THE GAUNTLET!” Steve shouted and Wanda lifted her hands, a scream eking up her throat and past her gritted teeth as she poured everything she had into this one effort.

But as they all closed in, space stretched. Thanos pushed each and every one of them back. He lifted the gauntlet. 

From inside the _Milano,_ Gamora and Nebula thundered out, swords drawn and belting out battle cries.

Back on the Wakandan helipad, Bucky had said to Gamora and Nebula, _“I know you’ve got more of a right to be in this fight than any of us, but Thanos thinks you’re both dead. Let him keep on thinking it. Unless we need one hell of a distraction.”_

Nebula had sneered. _“You don’t ask for much.”_

Gamora hadn’t promised anything: _“We’ll try.”_

And now they emerged.

Thanos saw them -- couldn’t NOT see them given that he was angled toward the rear of the damaged craft. His eyes widened. He hesitated, forgot to warp space, and now they were all making genuine progress, drawing nearer, nearer--

“Daughters,” he murmured, tears spilling out of his eyes.

He lowered his chin to his chest, drew a deep breath, snapped his fingers.

Once.

_Oh, God..._

Power exploded out, pushing against and through their bodies. Bucky’s atoms vibrated like he was zooming unprotected through hyperspace.

And then, silence.

In that breathless moment, dark, roiling clouds boiled up at Thanos’ back. He retreated into them, his gaze fixed on Gamora. There was a flicker-flash of lightning from within and then he was gone. Vanished. Escaped.

_Goddamn coward._

Steve kept running -- right up to the spot where Thanos had stood, but there was nothing there. Just lifeless dirt.

Bucky slowed to a halt and tucked the empty pistol back into its holster. Resigned, he turned toward Rocket.

“How could we lose?” Parker despaired.

And, in grim silence, Bucky answered: it had been too much to hope that they would prevail, which now left only one realistic outcome:

They had to accept that half of their numbers -- family and friends and this barely-threaded-together alliance of heroes and warriors -- would be sacrificed, and now that Thanos’ task was fulfilled, his will done and purpose completed, there might just be a brief window in which he would allow himself rest and lower his guard. The survivors would have to time the attack perfectly in order to pry the gauntlet from his fist and undo the damage he’d caused. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all they had left.

Quill jogged toward Gamora as she bowed her head.

Nebula threw back her head and screamed up at the sky in pure frustration.

Rocket walked up to Bucky, paw extended and Bucky reached out to take it…

Only, he didn’t. Couldn’t. Bucky gaped as his right hand crumbled into ash.

_What is this? What’s happening?_

The Snap. It was happening now. Right now and--

_What do I do?_

He looked into Rocket’s widening eyes, terrified and numb in the face of his lover’s frozen expression. Bucky asked, “Rocket?”

And then he was sinking, falling. Rocket lunged for him as Bucky hit the ground in silence; his entire body-mind-being dispersing on a sigh... almost as though he was nothing more than dandelion seeds scattering on a breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick rec: If you’ve never seen “The Professional” (1994, alternately titled “Leon,” directed by Luc Besson), I highly recommend watching that movie. It has the best character death scene EVER (first person POV, no less) and it totally influenced the way I wrote the closing sequence of this chapter.
> 
> In Age of Ultron, we find out that there are three men who are considered worthy of lifting (and presumably wielding) Thor's hammer: Thor, Steve Rogers, and Vision. I've decided that the removal of the Mind Stone doesn't affect Vision's ability to handle powerful, Nidavellir-made weapons. After all, he's still the same being at heart... and made from vibranium, too.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rocket POV
> 
> As for theme music, I am really feeling "Irresistible" by Fall Out Boy for some (i.e. Rocket attitude) reason.

> “What more could I lose?” Thor, the pirate-angel, the Asgardian who hadn’t been able to guard a single ass (including his own) had said through a strained smile and Rocket had immediately regretted plucking up the energy to look like he gave a shit, to _be the captain_ because, in the sheen of tears filling that one remaining eye, Rocket had seen himself reflected. Once, long ago, Rocket had been in this Asgardian’s place: anger churning in his guts, desperate to hurt back as badly as he’d been hurt.
> 
> Oh, yeah. Rocket had been there: he’d sneered and snarled when faced with the risk of failure. He’d invited fate and God and the whole frickin’ universe to do their collective worst: _C’mon! That all you’ve got!?_
> 
> But as Thor had unavoiably and awkwardly emoted in the close quarters of the scouter pod, Rocket had realized a single truth: “I could lose a lot. Me, personally? I could lose a lot.”

And now he was.

“Bucky…” he mewled in answer to his mate’s wide-eyed plea, tugging on his left arm because if Rocket could just take a closer look, if Bucky could just stop being so frickin’ tall for one damn minute, Rocket would be able to figure out what the problem was. Then, fix it. Because he always fixed it. Whatever it was.

The prosthetic arm detached from a disintegrating shoulder, landing heavily in Rocket’s paws as Bucky’s knees gave way and he tumbled down, dissolved into fluttering flakes of dust -- chest, neck, head… gone.

Rocket blinked, reached for the rustling ashes.

“No.”

“This is wrong,” Mantis warned and Rocket glanced over in time to see her crumble.

Drax looked up from his own dissipating forearm and, frightened, said, “Quill?”

Quill -- he’d just taken Gamora’s hand -- opened his mouth (because he’d forget how to breathe if he kept it shut for too long, Rocket was sure) and now silent death was languidly rolling through him, too: “Oh, man…”

So fast. Too fast. “WHAT THE HELL!” Rocket screamed.

“I am… Groot?”

 _No._ “No, no, no…” It wasn’t even a plea. Because a plea -- begging -- that had a chance (slim, but still a chance) of turning things around. But this was a nightmare and the only thing Rocket had ever been able to do in his nightmares was ride them out.

Groot extended an arm to Rocket, but Rocket couldn’t bring himself to completely bridge the distance; he shuffled over, near but not touching because that would make it real. In the end, it didn’t matter -- Groot vanished and Rocket was still too far away to hold his hand one last time.

Too much This was TOO FRICKIN’ MUCH. He clutched Bucky’s left arm to his chest and stared at the remains of his closest friend. Peripherally, he noted the scattering of others. He heard the shouts and wails and gasps of denial that echoed and amplified the disbelief straining within his own chest:

“SAM! NO!”

“WANDA! DON’T--”

“I don’t wanna go, Mr. Stark. I don’t--I’m sorry!”

This was a nightmare. Just a nightmare.

Rocket hugged the arm tighter, willing himself to wake up because _this was just a frickin’ nightmare._

“This was the only way,” Strange assured them as he faded, his dust and ashes joining Drumm’s.

Gamora fell to her knees, shoulders shaking. Nebula knelt alongside her, an arm across her back.

Captain America swayed on his feet. “Oh, God.”

Oh, God.

It couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be real.

Rocket’s claws dug into the creases and joinings of metal parts.

IT COULD NOT BE.

“Tony?”

“Oh, my God. Pepper.”

Rocket gawped like a moron, his vision swimmy and eyes hot, as a woman _(Where the hell’d she come from?)_ embraced Stark. The man held onto her like she was magnetized. “I couldn’t… I lost the kid.”

“We all lost,” Bucky’s useless chum whispered, leaning on Natasha when she offered him a shoulder.

Misery. What a miserable frickin’ hell this was. _And look yonder, the Promised Land,_ Rocket snidely mused to himself as he spun around and spied a quiet neighborhood that had appeared out of nowhere. Like a mirage of water in a parched desert under a hot sun.

Rocket stared dumbly at the collection of houses, all smushed together side by side. (Bucky would hate sharing a wall with the next house like that.) Some vehicles had been parked here and there on a road that looked like it had been sliced right down the middle lengthwise with a torch. There were trees and fences and walkways so people didn’t get their dumb asses flattened by traffic machines. It actually looked kind of nice in a bland sort of way. It looked real.

From the building in the center of the block, a man dressed simply in black hurried down the front steps and slid off of the end of the pavement, stumbling with quick steps toward the _Milano,_ where Hamir had just staggered out. They embraced.

Rocket felt his face tighten. His heart soured. His dry tongue tasted bitter. _Not fair._

“Please,” the new arrival and stranger said, “come inside, everyone.”

The only reason Rocket bothered was because of Gamora. She put a hand on his shoulder and refused to let go.

As Rocket followed the funeral procession through the crater and up to the fragment of city street, he mused that repairs to the _Milano_ would have to wait. Maybe for another nightmare. Seeing as how this one wasn’t done yet.

“How is all this still standing?” Rhodey asked. “One of those mirror dimensions?”

“Yes. After Master Strange was taken, I thought it prudent to conceal the building. Well, after Ms. Potts started banging on the door.” He gave Stark’s girl a tiny grin.

She was already tucked up against the side of Stark’s suit, but she pivoted even closer to inform his unmasked face, “Well I didn’t know where you were and things were blowing up and I wanted some answers!”

It didn’t look like she’d gotten any.

“Did he at least offer you tea?” Stark checked.

“He will now,” the man said, his cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. He gestured them up the steps and into the foyer. “Welcome to the New York Sanctum. My name is Wong. You already know Master Hamir, my father.”

Rocket found himself a corner to lean in, tucking his cheek into the palm of Bucky’s metal hand until he woke up.

Wong offered them tea.

Only silence answered.

“Why didn’t it work?” Stark blurted at Thor, gesturing almost frantically with his metal-gloved fingers. “That little drop of sunshine on the god-hatchet?”

“You wish to speak of this now?” Thor replied, too crestfallen to get angry.

But that was OK. Rocket was plenty angry. Enough for everyone, in fact.

Vision was still crying. Eyes gushing tears in silence like he’d lost the handle to the faucet that would shut off the waterworks. “Is this really the time?”

“We’re gonna problem-solve?” Rhodey tiredly demanded. “Are you being serious?”

“Entirely serious.”

“Tony,” Pepper chided him, placing a hand on his chest. Such a simple motion. It reminded Rocket of a time: Bucky slouching dejectedly on the workroom stool and Rocket saying, _“It feels empty in here, only… it ain’t.”_

His jaw unhinged. He gasped around the pain, panting quietly, and he leaned a little harder against the wall. It was a nice enough wall, although the slaty wood bits hadn’t been dusted in a long time. He smelled some kind of insect infestation in a couple of them. _Pesky house guests._

Stark said, “We gotta work this, people. The longer we wait… Look.” To Gamora and Nebula, he asked, “Did Thanos have an after-party on standby somewhere?”

Apparently, he did. Some garden or other. _How frickin’ quaint._

Rhodey agreed, “That’s cute. Thanos has a retirement plan.”

“We need a ship,” Nebula declared.

Stark pointed toward the wall and, beyond, in direction of the wrecked _Milano._ “Got one.”

“One that works,” Gamora clarified and Rocket felt her gaze turn his way.

“The Bifrost,” Thor offered. He’d collected his non-Thanos-killing axe and held it up now like it was the answer to anything. That piece of Nidavellir shit.

_Good for nothing, that’s what it’s good for._

Thor stubbornly insisted, “The Bifrost can take us to Thanos’ garden now.”

Captain America argued wearily, “Stealth.”

“Let’s try not to halve our numbers twice in one day,” Natasha proposed.

“Nobody has answered my question,” Stark bleated. “Why--didn’t--it--work?”

“Why didn’t what work?” Wong asked, confused.

Banner explained: “We tried to use the Mind Stone to destroy the gauntlet.”

Wong blinked. “Oh. Well, I’d say that’s because you can’t use one stone to destroy the others. Only the combined power of all six could do it. I mean, that’s what I’ve inferred through my studies.”

“Now he tells us.” Stark pouted with admirable gusto. Spinning on his heels, he spied Rocket in the corner. “Hey, you -- build-a-genius-bear. How long you need to get the _Milano_ up and running?”

Rocket sighed. This nightmare was taking for frinkin’ ever. “Dunno. Needs parts probably. Custom circuits. Wires an’ shit could be fried.”

“We won’t find anything like that around here,” Rhodey noted and Rocket listened with only half an ear as they hashed out a plan: Thor would Bifrost everybody upstate to the Avengers Compound, then Hamir would sling ring open a portal and scoop up the _Milano_ before returning to the sanctum to stand guard alongside his son.

Rocket had no objections. The Bifrost was intense. He wasn’t sure the _Milano_ wouldn’t rattle apart to little pieces during the trip. Mystical scooping was probably the way to go. For Rocket, too. “I’ll be in the cockpit,” he mumbled, slogging his way back to the door. “Wake me up when we get there.”

“Rocket,” Gamora called, jogging over and kneeling down and daring to make him look her right in her puffy, teary eyes.

“I really wanna wake up now,” he whined, rubbing his whiskers against the frozen, lifeless fingers.

Gamora gripped his shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Just a little longer. We’ll find Thanos, get the gauntlet back, and everything will be the way it was.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And Rocket remembered: Quill had said that the galactic asshole would have to sleep eventually. Bucky had announced with award-winning brevity: _“If we can’t kill him before we manage to get our hands on the gauntlet, then we do it after.”_

And then he’d LIED TO ROCKET’S FACE -- _“It’s not gonna come to that. We’ve got this.”_

_Sonuvabitch. Bucky had seen this coming._

Son--of--a--BITCH.

Furious, Rocket lifted his chin. He clutched Bucky’s arm so tightly his paws ached. “Then book me a seat on that battleship. This war ain’t over.”

“Battleship’s your department, Alf,” Stark said. “Choose your team.” He pointed at himself. “Fully qualified right here.”

“No,” Rhodey argued. “Your ‘department’ is gonna be busy fixing our suits.”

Captain America shuffled forward a step. “I can--”

“--piss off,” Rocket told him, told all of them. He needed the _Milano_ to himself. Needed to be with Bucky there. Their last moments alone together had happened inside that hunk of metal, their scents still mingling in his workroom. Nobody was gonna be screwing with that.

Rocket slammed out of the door and stomped down the steps. Beneath a clear sky, raindrops splattered on Bucky’s arm and the paw pressed palm-to-palm with it, clinging to Bucky’s thumb.

He tried not to look at the barren crater, but it stared back at him from all directions. There were no other buildings or trees or anything for Bucky to be concealed behind or within, which meant Rocket couldn’t lie to himself, couldn’t convince himself that Bucky was here somewhere, that this was just another mission that they’d had to split up for and that he’d be back ANY MINUTE.

Bucky wasn’t going to call out to him, walk up to him, or smile at him today because Rocket had just watched him _die._

He mewled as he walked, sniffled when he ran out of street, and howled as he skidded down the barren embankment to the bottom of the crater.

He sat down hard in the dirt and roared.

And then, when he ran out of breath, he got back up and finished the trek. This here was the worst case scenario: the unspeakable outcome no one had dared mention out loud. But it wasn’t the end of the fight. They had one more shot to fix this and Rocket was damn good at fixing things.

“We’re gonna be OK, Bucky,” Rocket told both the arm and the wristwatch glinting in the afternoon sun. “Know why? ‘Cause we know where that son of a crapsack is. We are gonna track him down and peel that frickin’ gauntlet from his arm, slice it off if that’s what it takes. We’ll figure it out, bright eyes. I promise.”

And Rocket wasn’t in the habit of talking to a prosthetic arm, so hell yeah he was serious. Serious like a death ray. That kind of serious. Hardcore serious.

Rocket marched in through the aft hatch just as the sound of those cute little Terran helicocker deals reached his ears. Hell, the pattern of the blades chopping through the air even sounded like the name: _heli-cocker-heli-cocker._

He snorted a laugh and wiped the back of his wrist across his damp nose. He checked his watch -- no signal. No surprise what with all the power blasts that had been bouncing around. So he poked at the nearest comms terminal. Nothing. Up in the cockpit, he had to reboot the system on auxiliary power before he got through to Gamora.

“Unknown humies moving in. How famous does Thor wanna be for his Bifrost skills?”

“We’re heading out now,” she said.

Rocket didn’t bother to pay attention. He was already working on sectioning off the parts of the ship that might actually still function (or couldn’t afford to be broken any more than they already were). Rocket busied himself packing up the _Milano_ for transport with Bucky’s arm in the navigator’s seat.

“That’s probably weird,” Rocket muttered. “Morbid. My mate’s disembodied arm keeping me company.”

He shrugged because, frankly, he didn’t care if it was weird or morbid or disgustingly romantic. That arm was Bucky-and-Rocket. Proof that the good parts hadn’t been a dream. Motivation, because Rocket’s life with Bucky -- now that was something worth waking up to.

There was a flash of light from off to the side, a shimmer warping across the convex glass of the ship’s canopy. _Sparkly..._

> “Shit, Rocket. You’ve got no idea what you feel like on me,” Bucky had whispered hotly in Rocket’s ear. “It tingles. Like sparklers inside my skin.”
> 
> “Every time?”
> 
> “Every time.”
> 
> “Everywhere?”
> 
> “Everywhere.”
> 
> “You sure about that?”
> 
> “Well, maybe we should check again. Just to be sure…”

Rocket gripped the ship’s throttle hard, eyes closed and head titled back as that single, intimate moment shoved his heart into his throat until it burned and throbbed and stung like a thruster that was about to explode.

Suddenly, the _Milano_ rocked, groaning and squealing, and Rocket jolted upright, punching away at the landing stabilizers--

They extended out and dug into lush, green grass.

Rocket blinked out through the windows at a wide yard maintained with fanatical precision.

_Gotta be Stark’s place._

It was.

As he looked over and up and up and up at the totally DICKISH tower looming over the landscape, Rocket sneered.

Definitely Stark.

And clearly, the guy thought he had something to prove.

> “What--the hell, Rocket?” Bucky had gasped out, panting and sprawled, sweaty tendrils of long hair clinging to his flushed brow and Rocket loved feeling so frickin’ accomplished. He’d wrecked the Winter Soldier. Again. “You think--you got somethin’ to prove? Already--told you--you’re the best--EVER.”
> 
> And then Rocket had leaned in to lap at Bucky’s pouty lower lip, swollen from love bites, from being tugged on and sucked in and licked over and over. “How’s that saying go? There’s always room for implosion?”

A knock on the cockpit windows from the outside. Gamora.

Grudgingly, Rocket cracked open the canopy. “What?”

“How’s it look?” Gamora asked, sticking her head in and scanning the instrument readings.

Rocket hunched his shoulders. Turned away. He wasn’t interested in dealing with anyone who wasn’t already talking to him inside his head. He informed her, “Bad.”

“As bad as Berhert? Can you fix it?”

 _“Yes,”_ Rocket replied because any other answer was simply unacceptable. They needed the _Milano_ because the _Quadrant_ (still orbiting the far side of Earth’s moon) wasn’t meant to enter a planet’s atmosphere -- interplanetary travel only. And its only scouter pod was back on Nidavellir with a new, proud owner -- that batshit crazy, metal-fisted dwarf. So this ship was it -- their one shot at chasing Thanos down and grinding him into dust.

She lifted her arm and, pressing the reset button on the side of her wristwatch, said, “Comms check.”

So Rocket suffered through that fun little chore until they’d established a direct link, bypassing the _Milano’s_ sizzled-up computer. The connection was strong. If Rocket wasn’t careful, she’d clock it every time he farted.

“Let me know what I can get you.” She offered, “A hand or a hug or…”

“Yeah. Copy that,” he grumbled and she went away.

Sometime later, when it was dark, she came back. She brought food. “Pizza,” she explained tightly, shoving a flat cardboard box into his paws.

He ate. It was good. He did NOT miss Quill. Not at all.

A while after dawn, Nebula stomped over. “Stark is a lunatic and every single one of those idiots humors him. I know how to fix the damn ship. Let me help.”

 _Or else,_ she didn’t say, but Rocket heard it all the same. “Fine. You got outdoor detail. Get the starboard panels off and start rewiring.”

Hours later, as Rocket’s stomach was growling but he refused to admit to feeling hungry, he climbed out of the canopy to look over Nebula’s progress. She had abandoned ship for the promise of palatable sustenance and Rocket was happily criticizing her for it when he ducked under the nose of the _Milano_ and spied a pair of long legs sprawled in the grass.

Leather boots. Denim trousers. Rocket crept around until he had a clear view of the trespasser.

“The hell are you doing here?”

Stove Rockers gave him a wan smile. “Probably the same thing you are.”

“I doubt that,” he retorted eyeing the humie’s clean hands that were in no way endeavoring to repair a spaceship. “Go away.”

“Let me help.”

“You can help by not helping. Or have you not noticed that every time you try to fix something it goes to shit?”

“That’s unfair.”

“No, what’s unfair is Bucky never held it against you. Thought it was cute or somethin’, but it ain’t.”

“Buck and I had each other’s backs. We--”

Rocket thrust out his arm, pointing right between the douchebag’s eyes. “Name one time you pulled him out of some deep shit without dumping him into another pile of it.”

Obligingly, Rocket waited. Until the count of five.

“Get lost, Craptastic America. Go plot a worst case scenario so we’ll all know what kind of fun times to expect.”

Captain America pushed himself to his feet. “You’re not the only one who’s hurting, you know.”

“But unlike some, I’m doing somethin’ about it.”

“You hungry?”

Rocket’s lips pulled back in a snarl--

His belly growled.

Captain America didn’t smirk. He simply fished some sort of wrapped ration bar from the front pocket of his hooded sweat shirt and tossed it over, forcing Rocket to catch it or suffer the indignity of having to choose between dodging a snack item or letting it whap him in the face.

Captain America didn’t smirk at that, either. He’d turned away and was headed back toward the building before it even landed in Rocket’s grasp.

_Asshat humie._

He tore into the wrapper. Gnawed a bite free and chewed the minimum number of times before gulping it down and diving back in for a second round of methodical consumption because it didn’t taste good, didn’t taste like anything, wasn’t worth the time to enjoy at all.

Rocket ate.

He shoved the wrapper into his pants pocket.

He got back to work.

He fell asleep in the pilot’s seat and, when he woke -- heart pounding and mouth dry, Rocket fell out of that chair and crawled into Bucky’s. With the arm. And the heartache. And then he dozed until his reservoir of rage refilled and Rocket opened his eyes on a vicious snarl.

His watch was beeping. Incoming call from Gamora.

“Nebula’s all finished with the out-ship repairs,” she told him and, just as Rocket opened his mouth to reply, two morons in flying suits roared by overhead. Frickin’ Stark. Taunting Rocket.

“Let’s see how fast you’d be if you had to make the frickin’ parts by hand, chucklehead.”

“What was that?” Gamora didn’t sound happy.

“A random complaint about our host with the most dick in his tower. Never mind.” He terminated the connection before Gamora could start asking questions. Rocket had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only have a vague memory of the Avengers compound structure, so I’m building (HAH! A PUN!) and improvising on that. Just so you know, it might be described hella differently here from how it actually looks in the movies.
> 
> "Alf" is not a typo -- check out "Alf 1980s U.S. TV sitcom". (^_^)
> 
> I tried to keep as many canon details as I could remember, including a nod to the build-a-bear comment Tony Stark makes at the beginning of Endgame.
> 
> Pizza was mentioned in A Shot in the Dark -- every time Quill tried to make it for everyone it turned out awful.
> 
> "Until the count of five" is from the first GotG movie.
> 
> Everyone who vanished in the Snap in the movie (Bucky, Wanda, Sam, Peter Parker, Groot, Quill, Mantis, Drax, Stephen Strange, T’Challa) is also lost in this fic (with the exception of Jericho Drumm, who was not in the movies, but he is killed in the Snap here). 
> 
> But there is good news: the characters who had been killed by Thanos during (and due to) his quest for all six stones in Infinity War are still alive in this fic. Yay!! (^_^)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this chapter's musical theme is also provided by Fall Out Boy: "Just One Yesterday"

It took three days to fix the Milano and then, wouldn’t you know it, that was exactly when Rocket crashed and crashed hard.

Many stupidly squandered hours later, he came to clutching Bucky’s arm to his chest. He had a screaming headache, a hollow stomach, and a dry tongue, so he was already in a bad mood even without the cockpit monitors blinking a should-have-been-soothing pale blue success alert at him:

DIAGNOSTIC SCAN COMPLETE

SYSTEM ANOMALIES DETECTED: 0

“Don’t frickin’ tell me I made no mistakes,” Rocket grouched, squinting irritably at the system. “I don’t make mistakes.”

But neither could he make anything to eat; the _Milano’s_ stores and shelves were bare. He’d munched through the ship’s entire emergency supply. Right down to the last squeeze tube of mashed yaro root gelatin. Oh, yum.

But he was rested and now able to funnel a satisfying amount of energy into being pissed off. Rocket considered that a plus as he stalked out of the aft cargo hatch and up to the Dick Tower. Rounding the corner and heading for the entrance at the side of the building, Rocket noticed that the lower levels were bunched into two blocky wings. Like testicles. With some window planters and vines, they might actually look hairy.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Natasha said, crossing the lobby just as Rocket pushed through the doors on a raspy snicker.

He dismissed her wariness with a wave of his hand. “What’s there to eat around here? Also, we’re three cups of java away from liftoff. Tell a friend.”

“That is good news,” she approved, showing Rocket to the elevator. “Especially since a new face showed up last night.”

“Yeah? Who might that be? No, wait. I don’t care. I need food. Caffeine. Then, maybe, I’ll care.”

He only cared marginally more after he’d wolfed down some reheated mess collectively dubbed “Chinese takeout.” It was on the stinky side. Salty. But hey, protein. That, plus the “coffee” stuff, was finally getting his engines revved up for takeoff.

Shoving the empty cartons aside and cleaning his claws carefully with a napkin dipped in a glass of ice water, Rocket returned the silent stare of the newest arrival. Human. Female. Probably Bucky’s age. And furious.

_Good._

“Welcome to Testosterone Tower,” Rocket intoned.

Rhodey cringed. “The _what_ tower?”

With a shrug, Rocket elaborated, “Well, I was calling it Dick Tower because I was only seeing it head-on--”

Natasha snorted, reaching into a pocket for a device of some kind and tapping at it in some incomprehensible code. Rocket got on with it:

“--but just now I noticed y’all’ve got a massive set down there.” He pointed to the ground floor levels below.

Captain America let loose with a strangled cough.

Rocket concluded, “Testosterone Tower.”

Stark’s girl -- Pepper -- was biting her lip, eyes squeezed shut and face tilted toward the ceiling. Either she was about to drop a load or trying very hard not to laugh.

“So,” Rocket said to just-arrived Carol Danvers, “you’re the new face with big plans for Thanos. I’m Rocket and I’m ready to make that happen, especially if stealing is on the agenda.”

“It is,” she drawled.

Rocket got down from the table. “Good. Great. Let’s go get our hands on his stones.”

She smirked. “Gotta say, I like your style.”

Stark shook his head, gaping at Rocket like he could not believe what he was hearing. “Are you listening to the words coming out of your mouth? This is intentional. Totally intentional.”

“Ain’t that what having an agenda means?” Rocket hassled him back.

Captain America nodded. “He’s got a point.”

Rocket craned his neck over toward Gamora and Nebula. “Got your go-get-’em bags?”

“Packed.” Gamora’s hands went to the knives at her hips.

Nebula nodded to the foyer behind Rocket. “My sword’s on the rack.”

“Banner?” Rocket checked. “Am I calculating fuel consumption for the Hulkbuster or not?”

“You are.”

“Vision, no crying in my ship.”

“I understand.”

“Pirate-angel.”

“Rabbit?”

Rocket bristled. “Do we need to paint a bullseye on Thanos’ frickin’ forehead or you think you can find it this time?”

“Hold up!” Stark sputtered, “You’re--no, how are you taking over this mission? No, you’re not. This is--”

“My ship, my frickin’ mission. If we don’t have enough seats, we can tow your iron ass out the back. Don’t worry. As a method of space travel, it comes highly recommended by a batshit crazy lunatic of our former acquintance.”

Rhodey clapped Stark on the shoulder. “Have fun.”

As Stark sputtered, Carol Danvers stood up. “Ready to launch, captain.”

And that was music to Rocket’s ears. “Ship’s out in the yard.” He squinted at Stark. “And a good thing, too, ‘cause takin’ off from that helipad up there? Talk about ‘coming’ to the rescue.”

“Oh, my God,” Pepper gritted out, tears leaking out of her eyes.

Somebody needed to get this woman to a bathroom _stat._

“When did you start appreciating dick jokes?” Stark stage whispered to her as Rocket stomped over to the elevator, the entire group following along obediently. Just like good little minions.

_Now that’s one hell of an ego-booster._

Pepper murmured back, every word distinct in the confines of the crowded lift. “It does look like a--”

“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s not, huh? When did anyone say--”

“When you first showed me the designs. I told you it looked like a sleeping giant pointing to high noon.”

“You--wait. That’s what you meant?”

“What did you think I meant? You said you’d change it.”

“I did? Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like me.”

The elevator stopped.

“It was you.” The doors slid open. “And here we are.”

Carol Danvers grinned. “Where a ‘phallic’ time is had by all.”

“Eh? Phallic?” Rocket asked because there was something about this woman that reminded him of Bucky: a sense that she’d never leave a friend in need behind.

“Phallic -- like a penis.”

“A humie dick, right? That’s what we’re talking about.”

She nodded. “Uh-hm.”

“Well, me -- I’m kinda particular when it comes to them.” He pointed to himself. “A one-humie-dick kinda guy here, y’know? But the rest -- you have at ‘em, Dan.”

Natasha chuckled, patting Steve’s shoulder. He was staring hard at the floor, blushing. He mumbled, “That’s an image I didn’t need.”

“Yeah, I second that.” To Rocket, Stark grumped, “Just stop talking about dicks, OK? You’re corrupting my girl.”

“Pfft. Drax was right. Y’all got hangups.” Rocket marched everyone across the cavernous foyer of Stark’s Testicle Center. “Get your shit and--”

The strange, stretchy sound of a string drawing taut drew Rocket’s gaze up, up, and up to a black-clothed figure crouching beside the fourth floor railing. He had some sort of pointy stick-on-a-string aimed at Rocket.

_Now that’s frickin’ primitive._

Rocket asked, “Who’s this yahoo?” After the clusterfuck on Luchae, Bucky had explained what a yahoo was and, as far as Rocket could see, he was moments away from being pelted by turds.

The dude on the catwalk scowled. “What the hell.” To Natasha, he called out, “Did I miss the memo? Are we a Disney franchise now?”

“Clint, meet Rocket, our pilot. Rocket, this is Hawkeye, our sniper.”

“Sniper, eh?” But Rocket wasn’t seeing a gun on the guy. As snipers went, he’d seen better. Way better.

“Pilot!” Clint Hawkeye scoffed and then nearly choked his own idiot self on a laugh. “That’s a talking animal!”

“Take a look in a mirror, pal.”

 _“That’s who he’s talking about,”_ Bucky would have said if he’d been there with Rocket’s paw riding the back of his thigh and everything right with the world.

The yahoo’s brows shot up in surprise. Totally fake surprise. “Oh, that’s how we’re doing this, is it?”

Rocket crossed his arms over his chest because that was how _not_ impressed he was. “It is now, apparently.”

“Guys,” Stove Rockers interjected, clearing his throat. “Do we really--”

“Have time for some ground rules? WHY YES WE DO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THAT UP, STOVE ROCKERS. First of all, yahoos will frickin’ behave themselves on my ship.”

“Or else what?” the yahoo challenged with a thrust of his whiskery chin.

“Or else you can damn well hitchhike your way to Thanos’ cabbage patch. Which, now that I think of it, that’s probably for the best. Good for the soul, I’m told.”

“Heard that secondhand, huh? ‘Cause I’m finding it hard to believe a regurgitated hairball knows jackshit about what’s good for the soul.”

Rocket reached for the laser cannon strapped to his back because the best two things for Rocket’s soul -- his best friend and his mate -- had turned into dust and ash right in front of his eyes. Slipped through his fingers. GONE IN AN INSTANT FROM ONE BREATH TO THE NEXT. Which was what snappy-one-liner, trash-talker Can’t Hack-fry was about to be: _gone._

Gamora knelt dangerously close to the laser cannon’s output vent. Rubbing Rocket’s arm, she quietly urged, “Let it go. He lost his family, too.”

“Don’t give him the right to be a dick about it.”

“So only you get to be an insufferable jerk?”

“Exactly.” But Rocket took his finger off the trigger and, a moment later, lowered the weapon. “Gimme a headcount people. We got seats for twelve and I got calculations to run.”

“Clint’s coming with us,” Natasha said, fighting the good fight and standing up for a friend who was being an asshole.

“Pepper’s already gone downstairs to suit up,” Stark informed him.

“I am _not_ sitting this one out,” Rhodey insisted.

Stove Rockers made six. Dan and Banner, eight. Gamora and Nebula, ten. Vision, eleven. Plus four suits of armor.

“I do not require a seat,” Thor declared.

Stark nodded. “Sure. We’ll duct tape you to the floor.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Rocket told him, “except you’ve already got more money than sense.”

“Amen to that,” Captain America sassed.

“LIFT OFF IN TEN,” Rocket announced loudly, heading out to the _Milano._ “GET YOUR BUTTS IN A SEAT AND YOUR SUITS STOWED. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.”

Eight minutes later, they were piercing the Earth’s atmosphere, spearing into space. As the jump point came up, Rocket asked of his passengers in both the cockpit and the galley, “Who here’s never flown in space?”

Rhodey, Vision, Hawkeye, and Pepper confessed to being hyper-jump virgins. In the cockpit, Natasha and Steve raised their hands like a couple of dorks.

“Do not toss any cookies inside my ship,” Rocket commanded. He punched the thrusters and in they went.

A string of muffled cruses eked up from the galley. Tough guy Hawkeye. “Son of a--shiptastic--mother flunkin’--”

“Haven’t heard that one before,” Stove Rockers murmured.

Natasha replied, “Kids. Strong motivation for creative cursing.”

“Thanks, Auntie Nat.”

“You’re welcome.”

Head pressed back and eyes closed, Banner muttered, “The more you know.”

“Personally, I’m waiting to hear about the guy who’s got Rocket’s one-and-only humie-dick,” Carol Danvers said from the galley.

“His name is Bucky,” Stove Rockers replied, leaning over far enough to speak into the open hatch. “And you’ll be meeting him soon enough.”

Rocket’s grip tightened around the controls, staring hard and baring his teeth at the swirling, flashing colors as the ship pop-pop-popped through one jump after another. With each stomach-lurching jolt, Rocket remembered.

...a crouched figure in a cage and Rocket’s gut reaction: _Wrong-wrong-WRONG what the hell was that d’ast Kraglin thinking?_

...an alluring scent that dug deep into Rocket and hooked sharply before pulling hard: _Aw, crap. I gotta share a ship with this guy? The way he smells -- this is gonna be hell._

...Groot stumbling against the side of the cockpit when he’d tried to manhandle their reluctant passenger: _Shit, it takes most people way more than one-and-a-half arms to shove Groot around. Actually, it takes EVERYONE way more than one-and-a-half arms to do that._

...punches that were a little too hard, very fast, and zero hesitation to not only steal an opponent’s weapon but slice an assailant’s limb off with it in a single blow: _Damn, that’s hot. How the_ **_hell_ ** _am I supposed to share a ship with this guy?_

...attempts at idle conversation that earned him hostile silence: _I didn’t mean nothin’ bad about his mods, damn it._

...and then sharing a boring, dime-a-dozen view of space beyond a bulkhead window, just the two of them side by side: _God, don’t let me screw this up again._

...eye contact; a weak smile; a soft laugh; alone in the cockpit with the navigation monitor in front of them and Rocket leaning against a solidly flesh-and-blood shoulder: _Damn it, his smell ain’t going away and neither are my shakes. This just ain’t fair._

In that moment, Rocket would have given anything for the privilege of reaching out, running his claws through that silky hair, tucking a lock behind a shell-shaped ear and oh God. It was a good thing Rocket had restrained himself because if he’d started licking, he wouldn’t have been able to stop.

Rocket didn’t often let himself remember that first day -- the day he’d met Bucky. But this here was a special occasion. Because he was one fight away from getting all that back.

The ship lurched out of the last jump. For a moment, nobody said anything. The lucky folks who had a cockpit window to look through just sat and absorbed the sight of the planet that was their destination.

And then Rhodey opined, “Bucky must really love you, Rocket, to put up with that shit on a regular basis.”

Rocket made zero attempt to downplay how much of a catch he was or how much Bucky loved him. Instead, he said, “Once a day and twice on fun days.”

“Dude,” Stark complained. “It’s _Sundays._ Twice on Sundays!”

“I KNOW THAT BUT WHAT GOOD’S A SUNDAY TO ME OUT HERE, MORON?”

“DON’T CALL ME A MORON!”

“How about,” Danvers smoothly interjected, “I do a little recon and find out what’s down there?”

“How about you do,” Stove Rockers approved and off she zoomed. Only to report back with a whole lot of nothing: no defense systems, no armies, just him.

“And that’s enough,” Nebula cautioned.

Still, once Rocket had skillfully (and inconspicuously) landed the ship and disembarked, it was pretty clear that Thanos wasn’t expecting them. Or, conversely, the Trojan prune simply didn’t care if anybody showed up intending to blast off his front door.

His shiny suit of armor was looking a little grubby out in the middle of a vegetable patch, displayed on wooden stilts. The Mad Titan himself was puttering around in his garden, wearing a tunic and pants similar to something that Bucky had once pointed out as a potato sack. Rocket watched the target pick a couple of spiny fruit-type things before lumbering back toward his thatched-roof shack. 

“So this is what retirement looks like,” Rocket muttered in disgust as he crept into position. For this part, he’d let Captain America take point. Team efforts had never really been Rocket’s forte. He just didn’t have the patience for it. Most people were idiots and only a bigger idiot would volunteer to wrangle them. Which was why Bucky had let Quill make the plans.

Except this once.

> “Bucky saved our lives,” Gamora had told Rocket the other night when she’d brought some bottled water and a sandwich out to him. She’d sat with Rocket on the open hatch ramp and told him things he hadn’t asked to know: “He stopped us from walking into a trap on Knowhere. And I still can’t believe he just grabbed me out of thin air on Vormir.” Shifting around to face Rocket, she had vowed, “I will give my life if it means bringing him back.”
> 
> Rocket had rubbed his brow, bullying past the persistent headache. (Tears fight back dirty when you refuse to cry the little bastards for days on end.) “Why you telling me this?”
> 
> She’d smiled sadly. “Someone’s gonna have to explain it to Quill.”
> 
> “Gee. Thanks. Talk about an impossible task.”

Impossible tasks. Not Rocket’s favorite kind.

They waited until nightfall. Rocket glared at the planet’s sun as it sloooowly sank beyond the ridge. And then he glared some more at the cheery light flickering out of the cottage windows until that dimmed to the glow of a banked fire in the hearth and _finally_ the last of it was blotted out by shutters being pulled tight and latched from within.

“Rocket,” Captain America said into the shared comms channel. “You’re up.”

Rocket’s smile was sharp enough to slice vibrabium. “Frickin’ copy that.”

He snugged his laser rifle up against his shoulder as he crept toward Thanos’ cozy garden shack. Given that Rocket’s unaided night vision could give Stark’s infrared sensors serious competition, it had pretty much been a foregone conclusion that Rocket would draw the short-range recon card. Add in his size (good for squeezing through smaller-than-humie spaces) and his experience with infiltration (and, ah, “exportation of valuables”), of course Rocket was the one-and-only-one with a green light for going after the gauntlet.

He had every intention of waltzing out through the front door with it, too; it wasn’t as if Thanos was gonna be wearing the damn thing to bed. Hell, only a moron would give their subconscious mind free frickin’ rein on reshaping the universe. So it was a mere matter of sly infiltration and scooping-up and smooth retreat.

_Plate of cake._

Encountering no traps or alarms surrounding the foundation, Rocket tucked his rifle away and shifted into the darkest shadows along the front steps. He followed his nose, picking out the least creakiest poles for climbing and the least dustiest beams for traversing until he wasn’t just inside the Trojan prune’s rustic paradise; he was poised directly over the galactic asshole’s hammock.

 _A hammock._ Rocket sneered in silence, scanning the room from his elevated vantage point. Again, no traps, no alarms. But also no sign of the gauntlet.

He sniffed the air, identifying and dismissing plenty of metallic scents (mostly from pots and pans and crudely made cooking utensils), until Thanos shifted in his sleep. The hammock rocked slightly and the blankets inched away, revealing the fact that Thanos was indeed dumber than he looked: the gauntlet gleamed from where it was still jammed onto his stupid fist.

_Great. Just great._

It was all Rocket could do not to growl as he retreated back to the front steps and silently reported in with a keyed message:

> _The dripshit is sleeping in the damn thing._

There was a pause -- a collective moment of unblinking disbelief followed by what sounded a hell of a lot like eye-rolling exasperation.

And then Stove Rockers said, “Copy that.” With those two words, the entire team seemed to snap to attention, focus sharpening and hands hovering over sheathed weapons. He continued, “Assault team. Advise when in position.”

Several heart-pounding seconds later, they did. Rocket, crouched behind some solid cover, readied his rifle because if they couldn’t pull this off in silence, then their next option was to go LOUD.

“Countdown on my mark,” Captain America said into the comms channel.

“Standing by,” everyone dutifully reported in, even Rocket.

“Breach in three… two… one: DANVERS!”

She rocketed through the air, over the garden, and smashed through the front door.

“BANNER!”

A roar and the sound of more splintering wood as the Hulkbuster erupted from under the floor of the cottage.

“RHODEY, NEBULA--”

_BOOM!_

The little hovel exploded. Bits of wood and straw and saucepans flying far and wide before thudding-tumbling-drifting to the ground.

Danvers gritted out, “CAN’T HOLD HIM! ON THE MOVE!”

“HE’S STILL GOT THE GAUNTLET!” Banner shouted.

“EVERYBODY -- ALL IN NOW!” Captain America commanded. “DUE EAST. REGROUP AND ASSAULT!”

East. Great. Right through a wall of brambles and busted hut bits.

Rocket cursed his shorter legs and bulky laser rifle as he tripped and got tangled again and again in debris-littered brush. By the time he made it to the scene of the battle out in the middle of some kind of orchard, Thanos was kneeling, straining against the desperate grip of no less than seven Avengers: Danvers had him in a headlock as Banner and Stark grunted and cursed, tugging hard at the gauntlet. Captain America and Gamora had his other arm and Nebula had skewered his leg to the ground with her sword. Pepper’s armored fingers were clamped hard on the blade, adding her full body weight to Nebula’s vicious thrust.

Rhodey lifted an arm and sent a blast right at Thanos’ forehead for all the good that did.

“Out of my way,” Thor rumbled, stomping over, Stormbreaker held at the ready. “I’ve no need of a bullseye to mark my target.”

“Got your back,” Hawkeye told him, aiming a pointy stick at Thanos’ heart.

Vision put himself between Thor and the would-be gauntlet thieves, his vibranium hands joining the effort to peel the frickin’ thing off.

Thanos’ other arm flexed, lifting both Stove Rockers and Gamora off of their feet; Natasha leaped in, adding her weight as Rocket reached for a gravity mine. “BACK OFF, IDIOTS!”

He tossed it.

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Stove Rockers roared.

Gamora jumped clear and Natasha shoved Captain America away as the device landed and activated, but Thanos’ arm was already moving beyond range and, with a primal scream, he tore himself free.

Stark, Vision, and Banner were dragged around, slammed into Thor and Rhodey.

Hawkeye fired, but the projectile did nothing except spark and sizzle against the Mad Titan’s torso. He knocked both Nebula and Pepper away and surged to his feet, grabbed onto Danvers and peeled her off like he was removing a winter muffler from his neck.

“I kept my word,” Thanos irritably reminded them. The fingers of one hand curled tightly around Danvers’ throat. “I let the stones decide your fate. Yet here you stand, unsatisfied and ungrateful.”

“BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU TOOK!” Rocket screamed. “WHO CARES WHAT KIND OF FRICKIN’ MERCY YOU THINK YOU GAVE US. YOU DAMNED US TO HELL -- THAT’S WHAT GETTING LEFT BEHIND MEANS, YOU THICK-HEADED SHIT POT!”

Thanos blinked. Exhaled. Seemed to reach some sort of decision. “Then let us correct it. Now is your chance to join those who vanished.”

Rocket figured it out just as Stark hollered, “NO!” and Thor launched--

Thanos clenched his fist.

The gauntlet glowed.

The world bleached white.

Rocket didn’t even hear the blast, but he felt it. Everywhere. Right down to the thrumming roots of each strand of hair.

The shockwave plowed him into a tree trunk--

_Groot?_

And a solid body jarred his shoulder.

_Bucky?_

Rocket blinked-blinked-blinked, sorting between the eyeball-searing light of the real world and the dazzling sparkles behind his closed eyelids.

Little by little, he figured out the difference between darkness and light.

A tug on his elbow. He yanked his arm out of range because that was not Bucky. Bucky never would have dared to grab onto him and haul him around like an old rucksack.

Rocket stood up. The tree behind him was not Groot, just some dumb, splintered-and-smoldering thing that had had branches and fruit a few seconds ago.

The humie on his flank was Captain Asshat. Of course it was. They guy just couldn’t process the fact that Rocket despised him.

“What have you done?” Gamora gasped out.

Rocket squinted toward a massive, sprawled figure. Thanos, lying flat on his stupid face.

Falling to her knees beside Thanos’ left arm and reaching for the gauntlet, Gamora screamed, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!”

“What--must--be done,” Thanos wheezed, his torso barely moving.

Rocket scrambled over to Gamora’s side and gaped at the charred remains of the gauntlet. The gem-colored stones were gone. Their settings were little more than smoldering craters. All empty.

“The stones now--serve no purpose,” Thanos rasped, “beyond--temptation.”

Nebula snarled, “And whatever serves no purpose is destroyed, isn’t it, _Father?”_

“I only--seek to--make you better and--”

“ARGH!” Stormbreaker sliced through the air and through Thanos’ neck.

The Mad Titan’s head rolled across the torn sod and glowing embers.

Rocket barely heard it. Didn’t even care enough to enjoy the sight of Thanos’ demise. The asshole had had it coming. For a long time. So it wasn’t all that much of a shock that it had finally happened.

But this?

Rocket traced the sooty edges of the warped metal with his claws and fingertips, still unable to accept the truth of what his eyes were seeing. But even though it was almost pitch black out here in the smoke and starlight, Rocket’s eyes were working just fine: the stones were gone. This was no illusion. This was real. Totally and unfairly _real._ And how? How could this be real? Bucky and Groot weren’t supposed to be dead. The mission to steal back the gauntlet wasn’t supposed to fail.

“We were supposed to win,” Rocket whimpered, his shoulder brushing Gamora’s arm. No one had ever come out and said it because even a bunch of suicidal idiots like these knew better than to jinx their only frickin’ backup plan, BUT GAMORA HAD PROMISED AND BUCKY WAS COUNTING ON HIM AND THIS WASN’T WHAT ROCKET HAD SIGNED UP FOR BUT IT WAS WHAT HE’D COMMITTED TO DAMN IT: after Thanos completed the gauntlet, they were supposed to steal it back and _kick his ass and bring everybody BACK!_ “Even after we lost, we were still supposed to win.”

But they hadn’t. And there was no Plan C for this. There was nothing. Nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rocket called Carol Danvers “Dan” -- that was a reference to the Beatles’ song “Rocky Raccoon” which tells the story of Rocky, Nancy “Lil” McGill, and Dan. The parallels between Rocket, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, and a “Dan” amused me. (^_~) BTW, I wrote a short continuation of the Beatles' song if you are interested -- it's here on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23891008
> 
> Drax makes a comment about Earthers having hang-ups about sex in the second GotG movie.
> 
> I, like Hawkeye, had no idea MCU was a Disney product until I wrote that line and then thought to look it up. I guess I missed the memo, too.
> 
> Of course Rocket is less than impressed with Hawkeye’s sniper skill set. Because: Bucky.
> 
> “The more you know” is from 1990s American after-school TV programming... if I remember correctly.
> 
> “He saved us from a trap on Knowhere” -- when Gamora heads out to rescue Nebula and gets captured by Thanos on the Sanctuary, he tells her (“off camera”) that he was waiting for her on Knowhere for a long time, but she never showed up. In that moment, Gamora realizes that Bucky was right: going to Knowhere would have been a really bad thing to do.
> 
> This line -- “Bucky never would have dared to grab onto him and haul him around like an old rucksack.” -- is particularly funny because that is pretty much what Bucky actually does when he crosses paths with Rocket in Infinity War... but what I think is very interesting is that Rocket seems cool with it?? Because reasons?? Hint, hint... (^_~)
> 
> Plan A was to stop Thanos from collecting all six Infinity Stones. Plan B was to steal the completed gauntlet from Thanos and use it against him (or to undo the Snap). Plan C is… uh, well, stay tuned.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And one more FOB song rec: "Alone Together"

The only good thing about their return to the Avengers compound was that no one was waiting with smiles on their faces and noise makers in hand for news of success. There was no one to break the bad news to. Not here, anyway, but Rocket figured that someone would have to fill in the sorcerers.

Rocket landed the ship as slowly and gently as he could. From the blank faces of his passengers, Rocket guessed that he wasn’t the only one who felt like the slightest bump would shatter him to pieces.

He keyed open the aft hatch. He lowered the cargo bay ramp. One by one, Earth’s mightiest heroes collected their shit and disembarked.

Gamora stayed in her seat. So did Nebula.

Carol Danvers offered Rocket a sincere salute in silence, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the _Milano’s_ controls long enough to return it.

“Keep in touch,” Natasha asked of him and arguing took too much effort. He couldn’t even scrounge up a scoff.

Stove Rockers was the last to leave the cockpit. “Where will you go?”

“Anywhere we want,” Gamora replied tersely.

Only, there was no place Rocket wanted to go. Except home. To Bucky. And back to yelling at Groot over that stupid game. And maybe, if Mantis and Drax and Quill were there, too, Rocket would be OK with that. So, yeah, that was where he wanted to go.

But the only place they had left was an empty ship on the dark side of the moon.

“Stay for dinner?” Stove Rockers invited.

Rocket refused. “Get off my ship.”

He left. They lifted off.

The _Quadrant_ was right where they’d left it. The sound of the _Milano’s_ canopy hissing open echoed from corner to corner in the docking bay and down the corridors.

Rocket collected Bucky’s arm from where he’d stowed it securely and headed for the bridge. Gamora stomped away, disappearing around the corner. Nebula matched Rocket’s steps, wordlessly offering to assist with piloting.

Arriving, staring out at the seemingly-static sprawl of space, ignoring the seats that would remain empty for a long, long time, Rocket stopped.

He said, “Only an idiot throws something away ‘cause it ain’t got a purpose. Everything’s got a purpose.”

Nebula jerked, flinched. She stared down at him.

Rocket glanced at her. “There’s a difference,” he said, “between what you were made to be, and what you wanna be. Just ‘cause he built you, that don’t give him the right to tell you what to do.”

“I know that,” she snapped.

Rocket shrugged. “Just passing it on.”

He tucked the prosthetic arm into the cache nearest his seat and, as Nebula took Mantis’ station, she asked almost hesitantly, “Passing it on from who?”

“Bucky,” Rocket answered, his entire body aching.

“That what he told you?”

“No, ‘s what he taught me.” And Bucky would have wanted Rocket to pay it onward. Still, it hurt like a sonuvabitch to share even that much.

 _When in pain, shoot something. And if that ain’t an option, pilot your ass somewhere where you_ **_can_ ** _shoot something._

He got Gamora on the comm. Told her to buckle up. Who cared where they went so long as it was far away from here.

They ended up in orbit around Berhert. Nebula didn’t ask, maybe because Gamora had already explained.

Rocket took the _Milano_ down to the surface with a crate packed full of automated targets to obliterate.

 _“Feel like shooting something?”_ he’d asked Bucky at the end of his first soul-baring session with Mantis. And when Bucky had happily agreed, Rocket had felt an actual thrill. He hadn’t even bothered with ground rules before blurting, _“First to twenty?”_

Rocket stomped out into the lush forest, dragging the trunk behind him and balancing his old laser cannon over his shoulder. He released the targets into the air and blasted-blasted-blasted, vision blurry and face wet and screaming-screaming-screaming.

Every time he counted to nineteen he stopped and started over at one again.

When he got back to the _Quadrant,_ he didn’t feel better despite nearly using up the last of the _Milano’s_ fuel. But he had another hundred or so zooming targets to put together and that was something to get started on. Something he could focus on. So that was what he did for the next however long, raiding the cartons of junk in the cargo bay because nothing could entice Rocket to cross the threshold of his and Bucky’s Bucky-less quarters just so he could hole up in his workshop.

Eventually, though, he remembered that he had to eat. So he did that. He passed by Mantis’ room on his way out of the galley.

Someone was inside. Crying.

_Time to be the captain._

Sighing hard, Rocket rapped on the closed door.

It opened, revealing someone else who couldn’t bear to go back to an empty home: Gamora. She looked embarrassed as she wiped furiously at her cheeks.

“It’s OK,” Rocket said. “I don’t think she’ll mind none.”

Gamora nodded, swallowed thickly, and held out a hand. Rocket clasped it and let her draw him over to the bed. They sat side by side for a while. Then lay down, pressed back-to-back for a while. At some point, Rocket fell asleep and woke up surrounded by battle leathers and green skin; Gamora had curled around him and Rocket decided this was OK. She was resting, finally. That was the most important thing.

Rocket closed his eyes. When he felt Gamora eventually stir, he didn’t open them.

The door squealed behind her as she left. She thought she was being stealthy because she couldn’t hear the high-pitched screech of a single ball bearing in need of oil, but Rocket could.

He could also sense that, despite Gamora’s departure, he wasn’t alone in the room.

He opened his eyes, glare at the ready and paw sliding toward the knife in his belt (a gift from Bucky because “everyone needs a good knife -- even tigers”), and lunged up with a snarl at the figure seated in Mantis’ vanity chair.

Frickin’ Daniel Drumm.

Well, some of him. Maybe like 60% of him. He was kinda see-through.

_So this was what the other Drumm was taking about._

“You look dead,” Rocket told him.

He smiled that stupid, rueful smile of his. “And you look like you’ve seen better days.”

Rocket didn’t reply to that because he was too busy wishing like hell he could say “I’ve seen worse” and have that be true.

Instead, he combed disinterestedly at his sleep-mused jaw scruff and said, “You here to tell me there’s some magic spell that’ll fix all this?”

Drumm shook his head. “Master Hamir and Master Wong are currently in Kamar-Taj, inspecting the archives, but it’s doubtful they’ll find anything that’s been overlooked by dozens of others.”

“Thanks for the update. Really made my day.” He scooted forward to push himself off of the mattress. “Ain’t you supposed to announce yourself before you just pop in?”

A single, soft chuckle escaped him. “Communication devices are somewhat beyond me these days. I did wait in the cargo bay until Nebula passed by. Once I convinced her that shooting me would do no good, she suggested I get on with my visit.”

“So you just barged in here.”

“After Gamora left, yes.”

“Good call. Otherwise, you’d’ve gotten an eye-full,” Rocket argued just for the hell of it.

“Luckily, I didn’t.”

With a sigh, Rocket gave in. “Yeah, yeah, OK. So we weren’t… y’know.” And they never would. Not even to push aside the grief because Rocket already had a mate and, over the last two years, he’d figured out that it was impossible for him to respond sexually to anyone else. No matter how nice they smelled. Bucky being gone didn’t change that. Was never going to change that.

_What a shitty way to figure out a thing or two about Drax._

And what a shitty thing to have in common with the guy.

Rocket tiredly demanded, “What d’ya want, Drumm?”

“As I mentioned, there is nothing in the archives of the Mystic Arts that can aid us but, if I’m not mistaken, Mantis was protecting something here.”

“You think…” Rocket couldn’t spit out the words. Hell, he couldn’t even let himself think them.

“I have no reason to expect that this artifact will make a difference, but I will not be able to rest unless I check. Just to be certain.”

“OK, yeah, I know the feeling.” Rocket shooed him out of the chair and dragged it over to the place where Mantis had showed him how to hide and retrieve the Tome of Ra. As he neared the exact position, Rocket could feel it in the air, a vibration humming like an out-of-tune chord whose notes were slowly synching together. Finding the perfect spot, he climbed up onto the chair, inched around until he was facing a whole lotta nothing that felt _right,_ and then he lifted his right hand. With a pinch and flick of his wrist, the book fell into his paws.

“What is it called?” Drumm asked, surprising Rocket.

“Mantis never told you? I might not be an expert on relationships, but it sounds like y’all need to work on building some trust.”

“What trust could I expect when she believed I was a figment of her imagination? A simulacre inhabiting her dreams.”

“You like using big words, doncha? That’s gonna get old fast.”

Drumm obligingly explained: “I never asked Mantis for information on the artifact because it was more important that she be safe from both the raw power of it and anyone ruthlessly seeking it. In order to show her how to ensure her own safety, I had no need for details. Although I was curious, I could not allow that to distract me from my first priority.”

“Man. You got patience.” Rocket put the book on the vanity and opened the cover.

Drumm leaned forward and read aloud: “The Tome of Ra.”

“Heard of it?”

“I have heard of Ra. The Egyptian god of the Sun and of creation.”

“Egyptian?”

“Yes. A people of Earth. Their civilization was one of the longest-surviving in antiquity. Some of their ancient myths and legends are still known.” He gestured toward the book. “Would you open it, please, so that I may read it?”

“Can I take a leak first?”

“Oh. Perhaps you should. This may take some time.”

“Great,” Rocket muttered as he made use of the adjoining toilet. “I’m a frickin’ page-turner for a ghost.”

But it wasn’t as though he had much of anything else on the agenda today. So he washed his paws, scrubbed his claws, and dried them carefully before making himself comfortable at the vanity. He had to use both of Mantis’ bed pillows for seat cushioning on the chair in order to boost himself up high enough for his elbows to comfortably clear the edge of the dressing table. And then he started flipping page after page after page.

“More slowly here, please,” Drumm requested and, sighing hard, Rocket obliged. Tapped his claws against the top of the vanity as he waited for Drumm to read the text once… twice… a third time.

“You think you got it or you gonna sound out the words next?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Drumm leaned back. “Please take this to Master Hamir.”

“Why?”

“Because, although there are several references that should be thoroughly investigated before attempting these spells, it appears that Ra was indeed the creative power of the universe -- or, at the very least, one of them.”

Rocket stared. Blinked. Swallowed. And said, “We can bring everybody back with this?”

“Perhaps. But these are not resurrection spells, you understand. If you used this--” He pointed to the script on the current page. “--to bring your mate back, he would remember nothing of his previous life. He would be James Barnes _recreated.”_

And then Rocket would have to win him over _again?_ From square one? Hell, he’d been lucky enough to experience that miracle once in his life. And, as terrible as it was to even think of forcing Bucky to relive the torture and torment of his past, a Bucky who didn’t remember Hydra, who’d never even _met_ Hydra… he’d be a stranger to Rocket -- just another humie spending his holidays at the beach so he could talk to girls and Rocket’s mate would still be gone forever. Maybe Bucky would be happier in ignorance, but Rocket sure wouldn’t and, since this life was the one he was stuck with, there was only one choice he could make: the one that would bring his mate back. Whatever that was.

Rocket rubbed his temples, grasping for patience he’d never had to begin with. “So what’s this damn thing good for?”

“A new set of Infinity Stones.”

For a long moment, Rocket said nothing. He stared at Drumm, who stared back. Finally, Rocket mumbled, “I’ll set a course for Earth.”

“It may not work,” Drumm warned Rocket.

Rocket looked down at the open book. “I’ve gotta try.”

“The sorcerers may be resistant. There’s much risk involved.”

“Ain’t we already risked and lost enough?” Rocket pulled himself together and demanded, “Just tell me what I gotta do -- what I gotta say -- to convince them to do it.”

After a long moment, Drumm replied slowly, carefully, “He who asks a question accepts that he will receive one of a range of answers.”

And since the only answer Rocket was interested in was _YES,_ he said, “So we don’t ask. We tell them what’s gonna happen and how it’s gonna happen. I’d tell ya to buckle your seat belt, but…”

Drumm smiled. “Ready whenever you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although Daniel Drumm doesn’t mention it, I think Mantis can sense his feelings when he visits her in her dreams. Like, she’s got a direct connection to his spirit there, so she would know that he cares for her and is concerned about her safety, so she trusted him. She doesn’t mention this to Rocket or Bucky maybe because she doubts it herself at the time. It’s a dream, after all, and she hasn’t had contact with any other spirits in this way, so she has no proof that what she feels from dream!Daniel isn’t a reflection of her own wishful thinking.
> 
> Also, maybe you remember back on Vormir, Bucky’s cliffhanging and he says, “No, not Rocket” and then the Drumm brothers make things happen BECAUSE Strange had looked into those millions of potential futures, right? He knows that Thanos will get all six stones. The Snap will happen. Rocket will be the only one who can retrieve the Tome of Ra and ask the sorcerers to create a new set of Infinity Stones. So Strange tells Drumm that Rocket MUST NOT DIE.


	15. Chapter 15

“Where did you get this?” Wong breathed, gaping and staring and all but drooling on the tome that Rocket had plunked down on his desk. Kamar-Taj was a weird place. The hallways smelled like dust and sweat and ancient armpit.

Rocket said, “In the interest of speeding this up, can I tell you the story after you guys do your mystic thingamajig--” He gestured widely with his arms, mimicking that Strange douchebag’s battle moves. “--and the rest of the universe is with us again?”

Wong sent him a token glare. “Not if you are aware of someone else who’s after this -- a cousin of Thanos, perhaps?”

“Wouldn’t that be a hoot. No,” Rocket firmly assured him. “Aside from a faction of Skrulls, nobody. We’ve been holding onto it.”

“You’ve been… holding onto this?” Wong looked faint. “For how long?”

“Couple years.”

His jaw dropped. “But…”

“The Ancient One was cool with it. The former Daniel Drumm -- you know the guy, right? -- he was sweet on Mantis. Showed her how to keep it hidden.”

Wong delicately turned the page, pinching the paper between his cotton-gloved fingers. “Yes, I can see why the Sorceress Supreme would have acquiesced to this item being hidden in the most unlikely of places. The power--what these spells could enable…” He was at a loss for words.

“Yeah,” Rocket continued, impatient to be anywhere but here. Didn’t humies know how to wash their feet? This might be a library, but it smelled like a frickin’ foot locker on a Ravager ship. Eugh. “Gamora ain’t a fan. I guess whenever this thing pops up in history, some really memorable crap happens.”

Another page turned. Wong grunted absently in belated response.

“Hey.” Rocket snapped his fingers, breaking Wong’s concentration and probably earning himself a mortal enemy in the process.

_Well, at least it’s not a wasted trip then._

“Hey, hey. Look, dude. You gonna gimme a quote on this? How long’s it gonna take for you guys to magic us up another set of Infinity Stones?”

“What--wait, _what?”_ Wong’s brows shot up. “What you’ve presented to us is an unknown volume of truly ancient spells. Untried. Untested! To fully appreciate the nuances and consequences of utilizing any aspect of this work could take years! Decades! And you just--”

“Newsflash: I ain’t got decades. Tell ya what. My next stop is Stark’s Testosterone Tower. However long it’s gonna take him to whip up a new gauntlet -- that’s how long you’ve got.” Rocket turned and headed for the door. Speaking over his shoulder, he airily suggested, “Get Drumm to think tank it with ya. WHERE YOU AT DRUMM!?”

“Please!” Wong hissed. “This is a library!”

Daniel Drumm appeared out of the aisle at Rocket’s back. “I’ll assist in any way I can.”

“Good. You do that.” Because the guy was gonna be a useless annoyance if he insisted on hanging around on the _Quadrant._ Now that Rocket knew the way to Kamar-Taj and had been shown how to slink past security by an expert, Drumm had exactly squat to hold Rocket’s interest.

And if there was nothing in this place that would help him get Bucky and Groot back, then Rocket had zero interest in Kamar-Taj itself.

He dodged and ducked his way back to the _Milano,_ shooing a group of kids away from it and smirking at the slightly crispy (and very unconscious) adult-sized morons scattered incriminatingly around the ship.

_That’s what you get when you to try to steal my shit, assholes. A little taste of taser. Bone apple-tits._

He climbed into the cockpit and set course for that spongy green New York place.

“Back so soon?” Hostile Hawkeye greeted. Rocket had decided to land right in the middle of Thor’s Bifrost graffiti despite the dude with the string and pointy sticks lounging against the side of the building at spitting distance.

“Where’s Stark?”

Hawkeye shrugged. “Making babies? How the hell should I know?”

“If you were holding out for the receptionist position, you might wanna keep looking, buddy. I don’t love dick enough to stop by for the fun of it.”

Hawkeye’s head tilted forward like he was about to nod off. He looked tired. Exhausted. Probably just like Rocket, minus the fur. With a loose shake of his head, he muttered, “A Goddamn gay raccoon. Definitely Disney.”

“Hey, Rocket,” another (and much more welcome) voice called. Natasha sauntered over. “You guys lit outta here pretty fast the other day. Forget your toothbrush?”

“No,” Rocket retorted, resisting the urge to check his breath because, shit, when was the last time he’d brushed? He could not recall.

_Great. That’s gonna bug the hell outta me now._

“No,” he repeated. “I am here because we forgot something a little more important than that. We forgot Plan C.”

“Ain’t no Plan C,” Hawkeye drawled. “Hell, nobody bothered to read me in on Plan A. I showed up for Plan B and got bupkis.”

“So, what’re ya still doin here?” Rocket needled.

“Stark’s upgrading my gear. Then I’m gone.”

“Clint--” Natasha pleaded.

“Can’t stop me, Nat. Don’t make me tell you to fuck off.”

“PLAN C,” Rocket barked, “IS A THING.”

Both Natasha and Hawkeye blinked at him. 

“We ain’t givin’ up. It’s happening.” As the main entrance swung open and Stove Rockers leaned outside to investigate the noise (or maybe just belch at a kindly distance from other life forms), Rocket stated, “There is a Plan C, so let’s get some butts around a big table and work it.”

“Plan C,” Captain America parroted like a brainless twit and, now that Rocket was looking closer, the guy was a haggard mess. Hadn’t bothered to wash his hair in a couple of days. His eyes were red and puffy. His jeans looked slept-in and the side pockets were bulging with what Rocket hoped were clean tissues… but he was realistic enough to expect they were probably the other kind. The crunchy, mummified-snot kind.

“Are all humies as gross as you? Yes, there is a Plan C. You in or what, Stove Rockers?”

“I’m in.”

“Then somebody tell Stark he can make babies later. This shit’s IMPORTANT.”

Captain America snapped to attention, marched back into the building and disappeared from sight.

Natasha nodded for Rocket to follow her lead. “The table might still have some coffee included.”

“Yes. Sign me up for a lot of that,” Rocket approved.

Hawkeye stubbornly continued holding the side of the building up, but at the last possible moment, rolled his eyes at himself and raced over to catch the door before it closed. In response to Rocket’s quirked brow, he mused, “So maybe I’m curious. That starts with a ‘C’ and this is Plan C.”

Rocket scowled at him. “Wit,” he spat out, “work on it, will ya?”

“That was pretty lame,” Natasha concurred with Rocket.

Clint flapped his arms once, shrugging like a dying chicken (and yes, Bucky had eventually showed Rocket a picture of a chicken so he did know what that was), and Rocket was definitely enough of an asshole to find the likeness amusing.

Stark, however, was not amused. He was the last to arrive at the coffee-laden table, dropping his butt into a chair with his face scrunched in a pout. “Why am I missing Game of Thrones for this? Today’s a good episode.”

Rhodey wryly noted, “The fact that you -- of all people -- are watching Game of Thrones is enough of a reason. Trust me.”

“Hey. Dragons are a thing. I’m getting one. Making one. Wait and see.”

Pepper nudged a cup in his direction. “Beheadings are also a thing.” She smiled sweetly.

Rocket decided he liked Pepper.

What he did not like was suspense…

> “Haven’t you ever gotten a gift for someone and then _waited_ to give it to them?” Bucky had heckled as the two of them had reconnoitered a heavily guarded satellite controlled by an impressively armed crime syndicate.
> 
> They’d pressed their shoulders against a wall in an alley with no way out, listening to the sound of too many footsteps approaching and this stealth mission was about to get real lively, but Rocket had been grinning, holding out the really cool pair of space shades he’d taken off of the last guy he’d knocked out cold.
> 
> “Why would I wait to give you these? C’mon. Put ‘em on. I bet they’ll look awesome.”
> 
> The glases had looked awesome. And seriously badass. They’d also provided a view of a hidden escape route via built-in network access and navigation. Now, if Rocket had waited to give those damn things to Bucky, the hostages they’d been hired to retrieve might’ve been moved off-site or killed while the goons were running around trying to shoot the rescuers.

So once Rocket had everyone’s attention (and Stark was in the middle of a long sip of steaming caffeine), Rocket said, “We’re gettin’ a new set of Infinity Stones.”

And yeah, watching that bomb drop was fun. Whoo boy.

Jaws unhinged and coffee spewed and it was legendary all around.

The explanationy things, though, not so much. But Rocket resigned himself to that part because the only humie Rocket had ever met who took him at his word was Bucky. Which was why Rocket never lied to him. Or screwed with his head. Because Hydra had already beaten him to it and Rocket was better than those muck sponges.

So Rocket explained until he was interrupted.

“Lemme get this straight,” Stark interjected, and Hawkeye mumbled, “From a gay raccoon -- that’s rich.”

Ignoring the commentary, he continued, “There’s a book that has a recipe for making stuff -- anything at all, including, say, AN ARMY -- and you just had it lying around propping up broken furniture while we were getting our faces wiped with assorted planets courtesy of Thanos.”

“First of all, if you get to be a dick, I get to be a dick and I’m pretty sure nobody’s gonna pay us to throw down--”

“I would,” Rhodey said.

“Second,” Rocket barrelled on, “I didn’t know what the book did until a couple of hours ago. NOBODY DID BECAUSE IT WAS HIDDEN, YOU NITWIT.”

“DON’T CALL ME A--”

“THIRD! YOU GOTTA BE A MASTER OF THE FRICKIN’ MYSTIC ARTS TO USE THE FRICKIN’ THING AND AFTER ALL THE ARMIES THANOS HAS WIPED OUT ACROSS THE GALAXY I HIGHLY DOUBT ANOTHER ONE WOULD’VE DONE MUCH GOOD.” 

There was a beat of silence. Stark swiveled back and forth in his chair, articulating his unhappiness with pointless squeaking.

Rocket was reminded of Quill.

“I don’t want us to be like Thanos,” Banner quietly pointed out. “Just… throwing armies at our enemies. Throwing lives away.”

“You’re right,” Stove Rockers said. “We don’t do that.”

“For which I am grateful,” Vision murmured. Rocket was sure he was missing something here -- some sort of life-debt that could be a neat tale to hear -- but Vision was already looking his way and saying, “I am also very interested in this place, Kamar-Taj, and what progress these sorcerers are making.”

Banner nodded. “I think we should have an ambassador there, right? I mean, this is a joint project. We’ll need to coordinate.”

“I like the way you think,” Rhodey told him, reaching out a fist for Banner to bump.

“Rocket,” Stove Rockers said. “Can you set it up?”

“I can get you in. Can’t get you a warm welcome.”

His lips twitched. “I meant, can you call Masters Hamir and Wong and ask them to agree to this?”

 _How boring._ Rocket’s way would’ve been way more entertaining. “Pfft. Whatever. I guess.”

Stove Rockers nodded. “Good. Vision, do you mind stepping in and liasing here? See if you can get us any pertinent information that might help with the construction of the gauntlet itself?”

“I suppose I am something of an expert. With regards to the Mind Stone at the very least.”

“And I’ll update Danvers and Thor,” Captain America concluded, but then tilted his head and squinted at Rocket like that would make it easier to figure him out. “Gamora and Nebula know about this?”

“Not yet.” Because Rocket knew what another disappointment would do to him. It’d make him think very seriously about ripping out the main processor from the center of his back and letting the network of circuitry fry itself out. Death over heartbreak. He couldn’t force Gamora to face the same dilemma.

And he couldn’t tell Nebula because Gamora should have at least one person who wasn’t withholding potentially important developments from her.

Stove Rockers had the nerve to try and scold him: “I think everyone could use a little hope right now.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘hope?’” Rocket checked, giving himself a shake and scratching at his own ears. “Because that sounded a lot like ‘rope.’ Ain’t that what you humies use to kill yourselves with? I ain’t givin’ her _that.”_

“So what else is there to give her?” Natasha asked the question like she already knew the answer.

Pepper agreed: “Sitting around staring at a wall isn’t good for anybody.”

“Exactly,” Hawkeye told them, looking justified in whatever mad scheme he was cooking up.

“Don’t.” Natasha shook her head slowly. “Don’t do what I know you’re going to do, Clint. It’s not going to bring Laura and the kids back any faster.”

“You looking to kill time?” Rocket asked, already hating the idea that was forming, but he said it anyway because _time to be the captain._

“A lot of us are,” Stove Rockers replied.

Crossing his arms and sitting back with a sigh, Rocket grudgingly offered, “We got room on the _Quadrant._ Bring your own gear if you wanna give space a try.”

Banner frowned. “You’re not planning to stay on Earth until we hear back from Wong and Hamir?”

“Nope. Pretty sure I’ll get the news just as fast in space.”

Captain America nodded. “I’ll go.”

Hawkeye slapped a hand on the table. “What the hell. Sign me up.”

Natasha looked so proud of him. “Rhodey and I’ll hold down the fort ‘til you cowboys get back.”

“Pack your shit. If you ain’t ready to go by the time I get done with the meet-’n’-greet, I’m launching without ya.” Sliding down from his chair, Rocket waved Vision over. “C’mon then. Let’s go call a magician.”

The talk went well. In fact, Hamir even magicked up a portal for Vision to step through so Rocket didn’t have to waste fuel flying him halfway around the stupid globe. Which meant he didn’t have even that to complain about.

He stomped out of the Cock-and-Balls Center and glared at the pair of humie dudes with all their accompanying baggage standing beside the _Milano._ Hawkeye looked impatient and irritated; Rocket could respect that. Stove Rockers looked eager and hopeful; Rocket wanted to bang the side of his laser cannon into the twit’s kneecaps.

To himself, Rocket muttered, “This is such a bad idea. I regret everything already.”

“Having second thoughts?” Hawkeye jeered and thank God; Rocket now felt like punching him in the ear.

“Already had ‘em, Ham Pie. The second before I even asked. And you--” He pointed at Captain America. “--no laughing at Ham Pie’s jokes. No looking amused, either. Unless he’s in obvious agony. Then, yeah. You got a green light.”

Quirking a brow at his fellow recruit, Stove Rockers checked, “Are you sure _this_ is what you wanna do?”

“What are my options? If I stay here, I’m gonna start shooting people, and then Nat’s gonna nag until I go crazy.”

 _How cute._ “As if we’re all not full-blown crazy already.”

“Yeah.” Hawkeye replied looking startlingly sober. “Point to Walt Disney.”

“I’ll point to your Walt Disney,” Rocket threatened, cracking open the aft hatch.

Hawkeye snickered.

“Three rules,” Rocket declared, barring them from setting foot on board.

“OK,” Stove Rockers agreed without even hearing what they were.

_What a dummy._

“First, don’t get anybody on our team dead.”

Hawkeye’s mouth scrunched into a thoughtful moue. “Sounds reasonable.”

“Hah! After a week in space, it sure won’t! Two,” Rocket continued, “don’t piss me off.”

“What constitutes--”

“Dumb questions like that one.”

Stove Rockers cleared his throat. “Got it.”

“And three, if you piss me off, I will frickin’ shoot your ass. There will be no warning or hesitation because, at this point, there ain’t anything else that gives me greater pleasure in life. Do exactly and _only_ what I tell you to... or else. Welcome to the Guardians of the Galaxy. Stow your shit and sit your asses down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might be wondering why Stark is making the gauntlet instead of Rocket (because of course Rocket could do it -- he made Bucky’s arm, yeah?) and, originally, I was simply keeping to the Endgame script (because Tony makes the gauntlet v2.0 in the movie) but upon reflection I think there are many reasons for why Rocket simply goes back to space. Let me make a list here:  
> 1\. Rocket wants to escape his failure (literally)  
> 2\. He’s trying to ignore the hope that Plan C could work (because what if it doesn’t?)  
> 3\. He’s trying to pull his family (which is basically Gamora) together  
> 4\. While I believe either Tony or Rocket could make the new gauntlet, Bruce is an important consultant for the gamma radiation aspect of the stones, so this would be a teamwork project that I don’t think Rocket has the patience for right now  
> 5\. Rocket (rather than Tony) is capable of helping people in the galaxy and Rocket senses on some level that Bucky would be proud of him for doing that.
> 
> I want to say a thing about Steve agreeing to Rocket’s three rules before even hearing them. Like, I see this as being quite out of character for Steve (because Steve is NOT an agreeable person -- this was the whole point of Civil War for me). Normally, he’d say something like, “Let’s hear ‘em,” but he’s in a REALLY bad place right now and has zero energy to pull himself out. That’s kind of what he’s hoping outer space will be able to do for him -- pull him out of the flaming death spiral he’s in. (Also, I think Steve is curious as to why space seems to be such a good fit for Bucky.)
> 
> I wrote the part about Tony Stark watching Game of Thrones before I thought up the super awful title for this fic. Puns. I can’t resist. But also, it just really unfortunately fits the story line: Game of Stones. The dick jokes and testicle references are just gravy.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourself for feels -- the next few chapters are some of my favorites because they make me cry like a lunatic.
> 
> Theme music: "Hold On" by Chord Overstreet  
> (Thank you to lacunalady for introducing this song and many others to me in the Steve/Bucky fic "They Know God (But I Know You)".)

Waiting was hell. Rocket hated waiting.

 _“I’ll make it worth your while,”_ Bucky had cajoled once upon a hyper drive in need of recalibration. _“Be good.”_

 _“I hate being good more,”_ Rocket had groused.

But recently, that was all he seemed to be able to be. The Good Guy. Captain Rocket, able to outmaneuver Ravagers run amok thanks to Ogord’s untimely vanishing act (and now the whole sorry guild was an even bigger thievin’ mess), able to talk Nebula down from popping Ham Pie’s head off of his shoulders whenever he dared her to beat him at a game of darts and then proceeded to win with an insufferable smirk, able to command Stove Rockers to stop moping (“Gimme a frickin’ sector scan if it’ll cheer you up, damn it!”), able to surrepticiously pass Gamora tissues on the bridge.

Rocket was discovering talents and tolerances he’d never even suspected he might have. Not in his wildest dreams _or_ nightmares.

 _Are you seein’ this, bright eyes?_ Rocket didn’t ask as another S.O.S. was successfully and gainfully answered. Thanos hadn’t just wiped out half of all planetary life; there were plenty of yahoos in space who were missing someone to captain their ships or fix their engines or tell them what the fuel gauge was reading.

Playground monitor. That was what Rocket had become. An interstellar playground monitor. Bucky would have laughed his ass off. Hell, Rocket might’ve even been laughing right along with him.

Humor. Now that was one thing Rocket did _not_ have the tolerance for these days. Everything familiar hurt. He still couldn’t bring himself to open the door to either Groot’s room or the quarters Rocket had shared with Bucky.

Neither Gamora nor Nebula made mention of the fact that Rocket had claimed Drax’s old room. And not because of all the guy’s stuff, either. (That time Drax had found his room in shambles -- that hadn’t been Rocket. It’d been Tiny Groot. But Rocket had let Drax think it was him because, damn it, Groot had just gotten brave enough to climb outta the pot. No way was Rocket gonna let Drax frighten him back into it. And given how often Rocket blatantly went through Quill’s stuff looking for bomb parts, the fib had been an easy one to sell.)

And since Rocket knew for a fact that Gamora was still sleeping in Mantis’ room, it was common knowledge that Rocket wasn’t the only one unable to cope. Hell, the only good thing about the _Quadrant’s_ current compliment was the fact that nobody was throwing pity looks around. They were all grieving for someone. Who Gamora missed was obvious. Nebula mourned the death of that last shred of hope that Thanos might one day look on his most disappointing daughter with pride and love. Clint cried silent tears for a wife and three kids. Even Captain America struggled through each day-cycle.

Today, though, promised to be an easier one. The _Quadrant’s_ tanks were almost drained, so they put in to an outpost to refuel. As close to a no-brainer as you could get.

Nebula and Hawkeye cleared out with the intent to raise a ruckus anywhere they could find the makings for one. Gamora tagged along to keep an eye on them (and stab anyone who tried to arrest them).

One refueling stop was pretty much like any other in Rocket’s opinion, so he wandered back to the bridge, pausing unhappily at the sight of Stove Rockers standing at the window, watching the stars from the lowest tier of seats.

But Rocket would be damned if he was run out of his own ship’s bridge by anyone. So he strutted over to his usual station. As he jumped in, he noted that the aggravating humie was not, in fact, staring into space. Something else held his attention.

In his hand was a compass. An anciently antique trinket that Rocket had caught glimpses of before but never bothered to try to get a closer look at. This time, his angle of sight was such that he couldn’t possibly miss the photo tucked inside the cover. A portrait of a woman. 

Rocket jabbed the monitor, bringing up the fuel tank stats. Watching fuel levels rise -- oh what fun. Second only to listening to space dust pitter-patter on the windows. So he said, “You planning on jerking off to that or what?”

Stove Rockers bowed his head on a resigned-sounding sigh and quietly wondered, “Does Buck let you get away with being this much of a jerk?”

“Pfft. Hell no.” Although Rocket couldn’t recall Bucky ever getting all bent out of shape over it, either. Even the light, backhanded smacks to Rocket’s shoulder were a rarity. It was more like Bucky had a way of adding counterweight. Unless of course he and Rocket were standing side by side against some mound of space crap in need of an attitude adjustment, and then Bucky was piling on the insults right alongside him. “And by the way, his name is _Bucky.”_

Turning slightly, Stove Rockers scanned Rocket. “So this is you enjoying a little freedom from the old ball and chain?”

“Dunno what ball and chain you’re talkin’ about.” Damn but humies had a weird way of saying things. Quill was 100% wrong about Rocket being the one with communication issues.

“It’s a comparison. Relationships are like prison.”

“Then that ain’t a good relationship.”

“Agreed.” He hesitated. “It seemed like you two had a good one.”

“Hell yeah it was good. Great. He ain’t here and I’m frickin’ miserable,” Rocket snapped. “Or haven’t you noticed?”

“Bucky wouldn’t want you to be miserable.”

“Well it’s not like he’s in any position to cheer me the hell up.”

Stove Rockers angled the compass in his hand toward Rocket. “Where’s yours?”

“What--a photo? Pshaw. Like I need one o’ them. Bucky’s everywhere. I can’t even go back to our room ‘cause it’s--it’s just too much, right?” Rocket stared gloomily at the monitor. “That’s what being mates means, you know. Doesn’t matter where he is. Doesn’t matter if he loves me back. He’s always gonna be a part of me. I’ve escaped twenty-three prisons, but I can’t escape that.”

“Still, having them close -- it helps.”

“Of course it helps!” Of all the idiotic things to say. But what he’d said was true and Bucky had always respected that about people. Well, he’d respected the ones who didn’t shy away from cold, hard facts. Rocket cleared his throat. “So, how’s it work for humies?”

“Hm?”

Rocket had never dared to ask Bucky this because what if it turned out that Rocket needed Bucky a whole lot more than Bucky needed him? It was better to not know. But now it occurred to him that he could ask another humie. A humie from Bucky’s old neighborhood, in fact, and if he liked the answer, Rocket could assume it was the same way for Bucky. And if he didn’t, he could blame it on any number of differences: like, for instance, the fact that Bucky wasn’t dumb enough to take a pair of back scratchers into a fight that was gonna decide the fate of the universe.

He nodded toward the compass. “When did you know she was the one? That is a ‘she,’ ain’t it?”

“Very much a ‘she,’” came the answer, “and as for when I knew -- when I first hoped -- it was probably… well, she socked one guy -- a real jackass -- right in the face. Knocked him flat with one punch. Most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. What about you?”

“Actions, huh?” Rocket mused, wondering if that applied in his case. What could he have done to impress Bucky back in those early days? Damn, he wished his memory were clearer. He exhaled and said, “It’s an olfactory deal for me.”

A pair of blonde eyebrows zoomed upward. “You smelled him?”

“Ain’t that what ‘olfactory’ means?” Rocket checked because he hadn’t meant to get that word wrong. Misspeaking didn’t rile Stove Rockers up like it did Quill.

“It does.”

“Well then, yeah, I smelled him. Couldn’t miss it. Right in the pit.” Rocket lifted his left arm and obligingly pointed to the exact spot. “I was putting a new arm on him. Heh. Figures it’d be a guy missing a body part. Those useless idiots were always good for a laugh… until Bucky. Ain’t that what they call poetic justice?”

“Yeah. Well, pretty sure you weren’t the only one -- Bucky thought short people were hilarious.”

Rocket scowled; he was 95% sure that Stove Rockers was trying to pull a fast one on him. “That so?”

“He was always laughing at me.”

Rocket rolled his eyes. “First of all, I doubt that was the only reason. And second, you ain’t short.”

“I used to be. Before the serum.” His lips quirked. “The only thing strong about me was my convictions. And there were plenty of times Bucky ended up saving me from taking those too far.”

Rocket sobered. “I ain’t forgotten all the times you failed him.”

The wistful expression vanished. “Neither have I,” Rocket was shocked as hell to hear. “Even in Italy -- I was there for a whole day doing a stupid song and dance before I found out Bucky’s unit had been captured. In that one day, Zola was doing God knows what kind of experiments.”

Rocket remembered the agony and terror well enough to know that the only god in that lab would have been one with a sick, sadistic curiosity. He didn’t say how long that one day had definitely been for Bucky. He didn’t mention the nightmares that still woke his mate in the night, his heart pounding and a cold sweat clinging to his neck.

But Rocket had already imagined a Bucky who’d never been modified and once had been enough, so Rocket reluctantly admitted, “Well, if you’d been a day earlier, maybe Bucky wouldn’t have survived the fall from the train and I never would’ve met him. So maybe I should be thanking you for dropping the ball when you did.”

He chuckled weakly. “Yeah, I dropped it, but you made a hell of a catch. You saved him.”

Rocket looked away, throat tight. “He saved himself.”

“After he met you,” the annoying idiot stubbornly insisted.

Rocket sighed.

“We’re gonna get them back. We’re gonna get _all_ of them back.”

“Hm. Or die trying?”

“I can think of worse ways to go.”

Yeah, Rocket supposed he could. Actually, Rocket could, too. Doing nothing, counting down the days until he finally bit the big one and croaked -- that would definitely be worse. He glanced at the compass as it was tucked into a trouser pocket and, yeah, Stove Rockers -- Steve Rogers -- probably knew a thing or two about the soul-shredding, mind-wrecking wait for the hereafter.

“She gonna be there? Y’know, when the time comes?”

He nodded, shoulders hunching almost bashfully. “Yeah. If there’s a ‘there’ kind of place to be, she’ll be waiting. We have a date.”

And Rocket had to ask: “But… what if she ain’t there?”

“That’s the risk.” He shrugged. “That’s why most people hold on to whatever they got for as long as they got no matter how bad it hurts.”

“Because even that’s more than nothing.”

“Got that right.”

Rocked snorted. “You ain’t trying to have the last word right now, are ya?”

He huffed, chuckled, threw back his head and laughed until tears shone at the corners of his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. “Habit,” he finally muttered, wiping at the moisture with his fingers.

“Eh, we all got those.”

Silence settled on the bridge. Rocket stared at the refueling progress. Steve looked out at the stars.

Rocket was starting to relax, had uncrossed his arms and was idly combing through his scruff when--

_BEEP-BEEP!_

Incoming call from Gamora.

“Aw, shit. Now what.” Rocket punched the connect button. “WHAT AM I SAVING YOU FROM NOW?”

“We’ve got Ravagers with live cargo. _People._ We’re taking these assholes down. You or Steve want in?”

Steve was already pulling himself up the ladder, three rungs at a time.

Rocket replied for both of them: “Yeah. Plan for two more. Send me your grid number.”

“Done. But hurry up. Clint’s got that gleam in his eye.”

Steve scooped up his back scratchers from the weapons locker near the main hatch. He passed Rocket his laser cannon without being prompted.

“Don’t wanna miss the show,” Steve explained when Rocket gave him a suspicious look at the unnecessarily friendly gesture.

But Rocket didn’t say anything when Steve scooped up Quill’s spare set of quad blasters.

They lunged out of the ship, barely taking the time to seal ‘er back up again, and then dashed toward the sounds of a firefight because of course Ham Pie hadn’t been able to wait five damn minutes and Nebula refused to be outshot by a guy with a bow and arrow.

With the additional firepower that Rocket and Captain America brought to the party, the hubbub died down pretty fast. Ten Ravagers, all in various states of consciousness, were hog-tied and handed over to the three outpost security officers that bothered to show up.

They looked bone weary. Probably because -- if this outpost was like any of the other stations and satellites that the _Quadrant_ had docked at in recent days -- the surviving wealthy denizens had quickly hired the most competent of their coworkers with the aim of protecting themselves against the rioting masses. Or Ravagers.

This particular group had been enjoying a little stopover on their way to the Kree slave markets according to their ship’s course logs.

“What kind of an idiot plots a direct route to an incriminating destination and then goes out for _an ale?”_ Rocket screeched in horrified disbelief. God it felt good to get angry.

Nebula answered, “These ten idiots, apparently.”

And only two of them had bounties outstanding. Small ones. From the Nova Corps. Which was no longer paying out any bounties whatsoever. Them being obliterated by Thanos and all. So there was no point in hauling those bozos around.

“You’re leaving them here?” the youngest of the security officers complained.

Rocket shrugged. “If food’s scarce, eat ‘em. If not, there’s your disposal unit.” He pointed to the vacuum of space. 

There were sixty-eight unwilling passengers on board the Ravager ship, all of them scooped up from various interplanetary flights that had stalled in the wake of the Snap. Gamora offered to deliver them home at a fair price. _(Too fair_ by Rocket’s way of thinking, because the price of fuel was going up, damn it, and the goodness of one’s heart was not an accepted method of payment -- not in _this_ galaxy.)

But the Ravager ship (a piece of junk named the _Roughshod)_ towed easily enough and plenty of the would-have-been-Kree-slaves’ families, upon hearing what a miraculous rescue the Guardians had pulled off, threw gifts of food and trinkets at them. Rocket found a set of chargers shoved into his paws that, just from eyeballing, knew he could rig up to augment the _Milano’s_ docking thrusters to save on fuel.

Being a good Samaritan really did pay off. Not much, but enough to get by.

“Wanna celebrate?” Gamora asked him. The locals were hassling them about staying for dinner and drinks and merriment. Rocket could see why Gamora wouldn’t want to put up with all that without someone to suffer alongside.

But he shook his head. “Sorry. I just--been a while since I slept. Gonna give that a try.”

“I’ll bring you back something to eat.”

Rocket schlepped back to the _Milano._ It was a good idea for someone to stay behind on watch anyway what with this being an unfamiliar planet.

It was getting dark outside so Rocket didn’t bother to find a bunk. He curled up in his seat in the cockpit and, wishing for the comforting bulk of Bucky’s left arm, dozed off.

He came to on an anguished cry because Bucky had been there. Just _there._ In their bed. In Rocket’s workroom. In the _Quadrant’s_ galley. In the crater where New York City had once been. Rocket had been able to see him and touch him and smell him and damn it why did dreams have to feel so frickin’ _real?_

_Not fair._

But, luckily, he didn’t have time to be tormented by it. The aft hatch was grinding shut and he could hear Clint teasing Gamora, and Nebula threatening Clint, and Steve placating everyone because that was what nice guys did.

And Rocket wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that little factoid.

“He’s kind of perfect,” Gamora mused the next day. She and Rocket were seated in the _Quadrant’s_ galley, watching Steve serve up something called a mash to Clint and Nebula. (Rocket and Gamora had already been given their portions and claimed seats.)

“Perfect, huh?” Rocket muttered. “No wonder he gets on my nerves so much.”

Almost dreamily, Gamora continued, “He’s got every quality I fought so hard to bring out in Peter. You’d think I’d…”

“You’d what? Wanna tap that?” Rocket bluntly asked, remembering hearing the phrase from Quill once upon a space pub.

Gamora let out a sharp breath, almost a laugh, but there were tears in her eyes.

Belatedly, Rocket recalled that Gamora had been there at that long-ago space pub, too. “Sorry,” he said. “But are you gonna?”

And if she was thinking about it, should Rocket tell her not to because what if tomorrow was the day the call came in telling them that the Infinity Stones were back and the new gauntlet was ready and--

She reached over and rubbed Rocket’s shoulder. “Not if it makes you that worried.”

“Hey. I’m the captain, not the king of the ship.”

Gamora’s fingers tightened in a firm squeeze before she withdrew. “The answer to your question is no. Because, as badly as I wanted Peter to be a good man, what I liked was how it wasn’t easy. For either of us.”

“You both tried hard, you mean.” Rocket supposed he could understand. Still, it was different for him and Bucky -- their personalities and habits had meshed just fine. Physical stuff, though, and species differences sometimes caused turbulence. Like how, for the longest time, Bucky had unthinkingly put the dental floss on the highest shelf in the medicine cabinet where it was almost impossible for Rocket to reach.

He summed up, “It wasn’t boring.”

Gamora looked at him. “Yeah. It wasn’t just the end result that made it worthwhile. It was the effort, too.”

Rocket patted her arm. “You can work on fixing me up if you need a project.”

She laughed. A real laugh. With her head thrown back and everything. “You’re going to wish you could take that back,” she predicted.

“Take what back?” Clint asked because he was constantly channeling his humie kids who were full of questions. (Or so Rocket had been told.)

“Gamora needs someone to badger into being decent. Since that’s pretty much what I completely ain’t, I volunteered.”

“Lost cause,” Clint judged of Rocket. Setting his dish down with a clatter, he advised Gamora, “Cut your losses now.”

“You do not need a male to hassle,” Nebula woodenly insisted. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time she’d told Gamora this. “Males need us. Not the other way around.”

Clint said, “I really wanna argue with that--”

“Except it’s true,” Steve interrupted kindly, taking a seat. He’d served himself last because, yeah, he was the frickin’ embodiment of fairness and consideration. It was almost enough to put Rocket off his food.

“It is in our cases, buddy,” Clint agreed. He held out his spoon. Steve clinked his against it in an approximation of a toast.

Humies were weird.

Rocket missed Bucky. More and more.

_Not fair._

At least the rest of the meal was uneventful. Rocket was looking forward to making a clean getaway back to the bridge and the million-and-one things on his To Do list.

“Hey, Rocket,” Steve called as everyone scattered. The gush and whir of the galley dishwasher churned along the corridor.

Eager to get them through the next jump point and in range of a really solid comms signal, Rocket paused. “What.”

“You are a decent person.”

But how much of that was Bucky’s influence whispering in Rocket’s ear? A lot, probably. Not that Gamora and Drax and Mantis and Quill and Groot (oh God, Groot most of all) hadn’t shown Rocket that being decent wasn’t a crime. But Bucky motivated Rocket like no one ever had before.

“Eh, it comes and goes,” he prevaricated and then got his butt outta there before Steve got the crazy idea that this was gonna turn into another session of bare-your-soul. Rocket alotted himself one of them per year and he’d done spent it already.

He was still on the bridge monitoring the public comms for more S.O.S. signals (and he was starting to get hungry, sleepy, and damn it all crabby) when guess who showed up.

“We have a visitor,” Gamora announced, leading an ephemeral Daniel Drumm onto the bridge. “And he says he’s got good news.”

Rocket not only perked up but stood up on his chair.

Gamora’s eyes narrowed at his lack of surprise. “You know about this.”

“I know about this.” And she could hate him as much as she wanted for the rest of forever so long as Plan C had a green light. “It’s done?”

“Yes. Everything is prepared. When can we expect you?”

Rocket was already halfway through inputing their destination into the nav computer.

“Tell me what’s going on, Rocket,” Gamora demanded.

Nebula popped up from somewhere behind her sister and squinted at him. “You’re acting more suspicious than usual.”

“Get the dudes,” Rocket told her. “I got an announcement to make and then we’re hyper-jumping back to Earth.” The computer coughed up a course and Rocket looked up at Daniel Drumm. “Give us twenty hours. Need a ride?”

“No, thank you. I’ll let them know your ETA. Avengers Compound, not Kamar-Taj.”

“Got it.”

Daniel Drumm disappeared just as Steve and Clint stumbled in on a run. (Nebula had used the ship’s intercomm which was supposed to be for emergencies ONLY.)

“What’s going on?” Clint demanded.

Steve asked, “Who was that? Not Jericho Drumm -- his brother?”

Rocket took a deep breath and figured he’d better start with the good news first because maybe -- just maybe -- Gamora would be too overjoyed to stab him too badly when she heard the rest of it. He said, “The sorcerers have made us another set of Infinity Stones and Stark’s whipped up another gauntlet. Whadaya say we give that backup plan another shot?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Drax packs up and takes a HUGE bag with him to Ego’s planet because he’s worried about Rocket going through his stuff. So here in this chapter is my headcanon on that. (^_~)
> 
> Poor Nebula. Clint doesn’t play fair. He’s no doubt taking a lot of his grief out on her when he goads her into a game of darts (and ultimately hoping to pick a fight). This is meant to contrast with the time Nebula spends with Tony in Endgame (and how he tries to teach her what fun is).
> 
> You may have noticed (and been moderately annoyed by) Rocket’s tendency to think of Bucky, Quill, Groot, Mantis, and Drax as if they’re not dead. He often phrases things like “Bucky respected that about people” instead of “Bucky had respected” and this choice of tense is deliberate. Rocket cannot deal with them all being gone forever, so he’s avoiding thinking or talking about them in the past tense because, like, maybe the sorcerers will come through for them. Poor Rocket is clinging to hope that is burning him alive.
> 
> “You saved him” / “He saved himself” -- Steve is talking about the fact that Bucky was simply existing (focused solely on survival) before he met Rocket. After Bucky met Rocket, Steve could see that the essence of his childhood friend started to come back. Bucky was “Bucky” again. 
> 
> “have the last word” -- remember Bucky got on Steve’s case about this back in Wakanda (Chapter 5) while they were waiting for Thanos to attack and/or Rocket, Groot, and Thor to arrive?
> 
> I was hoping I’d have the chance to showcase Hamir in this fic, but it just couldn’t happen from Rocket’s POV. See, I think Hamir doesn’t talk (even though he CAN) because once he started getting good at the Mystic Arts, his voice took on a powerful, persuasive quality. It’s rare, but not completely unknown (as per my headcanon) and the only conscientious thing for the afflicted sorcerer to do is to take a vow of silence. This increases Hamir’s sensitivity to magic (so he was the perfect guy for the job of tracking down a missing sorcerer in space), and if he does use his voice to perform a spell, then the results are super fantastic. By this logic, he could actually be stronger than Stephen Strange, but Hamir doesn’t qualify for the position of Sorcerer Supreme because even in daily life he cannot use his voice. So Hamir is pretty much the sorcerers’ secret weapon -- which might also explain why he was the assistant to the Ancient One (because Hamir was her go-to guy if she ever couldn’t perform a spell that really needed to be done Very Well). (^_~)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another awesome song rec'd by lacunalady: "Feel Something" by Jaymes Young
> 
> lacunalady also led me to Dermot Kennedy and I've been listening to "Outnumbered" on repeat for d-a-y-s.

Gamora was pissed. Flaming--nuclear--pissed.

Rocket zigged and zagged around the bridge, letting various chairs and stationary equipment take the brunt of her guaranteed-to-be-painful, violent emoting.

“YOU COULDN’T HAVE MENTIONED THIS SOONER!” she shouted at what Rocket was hoping was the end of a long tirade about emotional torment and grief and tears and how gross snot was and she blamed Rocket for all of it. “WE’RE GETTING THEM BACK AND YOU SAID NOTHING BEFORE NOW? EXPLAIN THIS TO ME.”

“BECAUSE WHAT IF IT DIDN’T WORK?” he hollered back. “IT WAS BAD ENOUGH THAT I HAD TO LIVE WITH THIS SHIT -- YOU WERE ONE MORE ‘BAD NEWS’ AWAY FROM BEING PROMOTED TO CAPTAIN!”

Gamora froze, panting.

Clint looked ready to punch something.

Nebula slouched against the nearest battle station and crossed her arms, pouting because maybe Rocket wasn’t about to be skinned alive.

Steve bowed his head and Rocket did them both a favor and assumed it wasn’t out of pity.

“I can’t,” Rocket continued calmly and flatly, “go through losing hope again. Was I supposed to put that on you, too?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”

“If I had known in advance that it was going to work, yeah, I would’ve told ya.”

Nebula grouched to Gamora, “We could have been giving each other pretty manicures instead of getting doused repeatedly in your miserable body fluids.”

Clint grimaced. “Wow. I would have bitched about being cried on and used as a handkerchief, but that sounds so much worse. I’m stealing that line, just so you know.”

Nebula bared her teeth at him.

Steve ignored them both. “How far are we to the jump point?”

“A little over ten hours. We’re going, right?” Rocket asked Gamora. “Or you wanna complain about that, too?”

“You are such an asshole.” She leaned past him and hit the command to get the ship moving on its new course.

Rocket buckled in without a word, fully intending to spend the next ten hours right here because if he stared at the monitors, they’d make better time, guaranteed.

Damn. By this time tomorrow -- in less than one 24-hour Terran day, he’d have Groot back. He’d have Bucky back. Oh, God. Was this really happening? Finally, after all the shit and screw-ups?

They arrived precisely nineteen-and-a-half insanely long hours later.

Stark was waiting for them outside of the Testosterone Tower. “Oh, look,” he greeted Clint and Steve. “Space chewed you up and spat you back out. But you both look a lot better now than when you ran off, tail tucked between your legs.”

Clint retorted, “Leave what’s between my legs alone.”

“They’re making you wait, huh?” Steve deduced from the testy welcome.

“Yes. They are making me wait and I don’t like it. Nebula, from the look of you, you either need to eat or find someone to beat up. Banner’s around back testing out the new Hulkbuster suit. Take that information however you want.”

Gamora emerged next, striding past Rocket like he was invisible, so he figured she still wasn’t over it yet. She snapped, “Where’s the gauntlet?”

“Uh, final testing now,” Stark almost sputtered, shocked that someone dared to be ruder than him.

She stomped around to the corner of the main building, maybe to take up Stark’s invitation to either eat or beat the Hulkbuster.

Nebula said, “I want food,” and disappeared inside the building.

To Clint, Stark said, “Your gear’s all set. You’re welcome, by the way. But Nat’s babysitting it. Not my doing. Blame Pepper for that one.”

“Okie dokie,” Hawkeye replied and, face set with grim purpose, went on the hunt. 

“And you,” Stark said to Steve, “I’ve got nothing for you. Not even coffee. I know it was you putting the grounds down the garbage disposal.”

“That was two years ago.”

“Hah!” Stark jabbed a finger in Steve’s face. “Confirmation.”

“And an apology,” Steve ruefully continued. “I am sorry for putting coffee grounds in the garbage disposal.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to finagle you into signing the Accords.”

Steve accepted that with a nod.

“But I still think we’ve been better off with them than without them. And the last couple years, we could’ve been _great_ if we’d all been on the same side. So that’s on you.”

“That is on me.”

“And you’re still not sorry.”

“I’m a hundred years old, Tony. You really expect me to change now?”

Stark blew out a hot breath, capitulating to the point: “Sure. Right. When has Captain America ever compromised.” Then he turned his attention to Rocket. “You. I’ve got something for you. And you’re gonna take it with grace and appreciation.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because your plus one is gonna end up out-living you by about fifty years thanks to that eyesore scrap metal you carry around.” He gestured aimlessly to the hardware on Rocket’s upper back. “If I can’t convince you to dump him, then the least you could do is stick around to keep an eye on him.”

Rocket swallowed thickly, the tension bleeding out of him. “Yeah,” he rasped, blinking back gathering tears. “Yeah, I suppose I could do that.”

Steve took one elevator up and Rocket followed Stark into another going down. Down, down, down into the workshop adjoining the underground hangar.

“This ain’t bad,” he approved of the setup. “Roomy. Your ‘bot over there sorts and stores your stuff?”

“Dowses fires, records video, uploads to YouTube, you name it. Want one?”

Rocket was tempted, but… “Nah. I like doing it myself.” Because every time Rocket had a tool or part in his paws, he had the power to do something with it. That feeling never got old.

“Hop up here.” Stark pointed to an operating table. Once Rocket was sitting on the edge of it, his feet dangling high above the cement floor, Stark presented (with a flourish) the device he was intending to implant. “Ta-da!!”

Rocket reached out for it, held it in his paws, turned it over and examined it carefully. “This is pretty good. You must have been really bored.”

“Finished watching Game of Thrones. Disappointing ending -- I don’t recommend it. After that, yeah. I had some time to think.” He solemnly told Rocket, “I’m never gonna forget or forgive the fact that he killed my parents.”

Rocket met Stark’s gaze. “He ain’t, either.”

Blinking down at a rolling side table and swiping at its sparkling clean surface with a rag, Stark muttered, “Just so we’re clear. This--” He pointed to the processor in Rocket’s grasp. “This isn’t for him. It’s for you because you’re my friend. And if I get to say ‘screw you’ to Hydra with it, then all the better.”

“Works for me.” Rocket handed it back and started unfastening the shoulder straps of his overalls. “So, that’s gonna give me fifty humie years, huh?”

“Fifty years, guaranteed, or you can haunt me for free.”

“I accept those terms.” Rocket laid down on the table, hating how exposed he felt with no weapon and his arms folded under his chin.

To the robot, Stark said, “Hey, Dummy, bring me my tinker toys.” And then, as the lab helper complied, Stark said to Rocket, “Is there anything I can give you for the pain?”

“Not that I know of.”

“This is gonna hurt like a mother…”

“Won’t be the first time.”

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be the only one coming out of this with nightmares.” He rummaged around in a cabinet and returned with a headset. “Here. Put this on.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Meet B.A.R.F. -- binary augmented retroactive framing. Pick a crappy memory and fix it. Convince yourself you did what you didn’t do the first time around.”

Rocket stared at the humie-type headset for a moment before saying, “Naw. With memories like mine, a medical procedure’s still better. I like the name, though.”

Stark chuckled as he packed the thing back up and put it away. “You’re the only one.”

With a smirk, Rocket quipped, “Ain’t no thing like me, except me.”

“So long as that mindwiped minion of yours gets that.”

Rocket leaned up and looked at Stark over his shoulder. “He does. Tony,” he insisted, waiting until he had his friend’s full attention. “He really does.”

“Well. OK. Then I guess this can be for him, too. A little bit.” He mustered up a tight smile to go along with the peace offering. “Now shut up and stay still. I’ve got to read the fine print here.”

 _“Can_ you read?”

“Final warning, fur face.”

Smirking, Rocket shut up. He let his eyes rove over what he could see of the lab while Stark counted under his breath, poking at the connections that intersected with the webbing of circuitry that had been painstakingly (and very painfully) woven throughout Rocket’s bones and tissue.

Stark mumbled at Dummy. He muttered commands for analyses at his AI personal assistant F.R.I.D.A.Y., who had the patience of a frickin’ saint and _that_ was pretty much a basic system requirement for working with Stark, who scanned and planned and, finally, declared it was time.

“Give Rocket the chew thing,” Stark ordered the robot and Dummy held out a small, rubber doughnut. It was orange and had black stripes plus an adorable smiling face with a pair of black eyes, a nose, and whiskers painted on. Two tiny ears poked out from the outer edge. Rocket felt like he was being mocked somehow.

“What is that supposed to be?”

“A tiger.”

Rocket clamped down hard, but the whine still eked out through his nose. Irritated with himself for getting all mushy while lying on an operating table, he barked, “And just what am I supposed to do with it?”

“Bite down.” When he didn’t take it, Stark nudged, “C’mon, you don’t wanna bust up that pretty smile.”

“Asshole. If my smile is pretty _anything,_ then it’s pretty frickin’ vicious.”

“That’s what I said. Also, your minion probably likes your tongue the way it is versus bitten off.”

Rolling his eyes, Rocket swiped the rubber doughnut tiger from Dummy’s outstretched appendage and clamped it between his jaws. He twisted his head back Stark’s way to show him the result and caught a glimpse of a spidery-looking device wrapping long tentacles around Rocket’s main processor.

 _Aw, shit._ So that was how Stark was gonna do this -- the connections were going to be severed all at once. The old processor would be popped off and the new one put on. There would probably only be a delay of one or two seconds (Rocket trusted that the new processor was fully capable of detecting and initiating connections without slow and manual attention) but damn. That one or two seconds was going to feel like an eternity.

Rocket turned back around and reached for the top edge of the table so he didn’t puncture his own palms with his claws because what was coming was going to be one massive jolt of agony.

Stark cleared his throat. “Proceeding in three… two… one!”

Agony. Hah. The word didn’t even begin to describe the pure, blinding torment. The cold shock in his dead nerves, the implosion of his brain, the limp and terrible numbness in his limbs as he was sucked into a supermassive black hole, his atoms torn apart--

_Click!_

And then there was light. Soft tingling. Relief.

 _Is this what Bucky feels?_ Rocket deliriously wondered, coasting on a gentle wave of soothing existence.

“Don’t move yet,” Stark warned. “Diagnostics.”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. kindly sassed, “This is a first, is it, Mister Stark?”

“Hey. I go the extra mile for friends.”

Rocket had no objections. The cool metal of the table had long since warmed to match Rocket’s body heat and he was too gloriously relaxed to care about the unforgiving surface.

“Firing connections,” Stark warned and Rocket gasped as delicious warmth poured through his entire body from the tippy tips of his ears to his curling, clawed toes to the very end of his tail.

“We missing anything?” Stark checked.

Rocket weakly tugged the mouth guard out from between his aching jaws and panted: “Uh, nope. Think you got ‘em all.” Frickin’ shit balls, that felt amazing. Rocket was a little concerned that his next orgasm really might just kill him.

“OK. F.R.I.D.A.Y. Final scan.”

“Procedure successful,” she informed him.

“Gimme the percent. You know I like that part.”

“98.8%, sir.”

“Hm. 98.8% performance. Think you can live with that?”

“What was the old one?” Rocket asked, trying to summon the energy to move.

“Something in the low 60s.”

“Then we’ll be lucky if I don’t die from overload.”

“Want me to adjust it?”

“Naw, but show me how.” Just in case Rocket’s new nervous system was too sensitive.

Using a camera and holographic monitors so that Rocket could fiddle with the device himself, he ended up toning down the power to about eighty. He’d up it later if his brain didn’t melt.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Actually,” Stark replied to the new arrival -- the Thanos Killer That Could (and eventually did), “you just missed the part about how to save a life.”

Thor came around so that Rocket could see him. He’d heard him coming -- hard to miss those heavy footfalls on this floor -- but now he had a view of an adorably concerned frown. “Your life was in jeopardy?”

“Not really--”

“Yes, really. Take a look for yourself.” Stark shoved the old processor at him. “It’s a wonder this cow patty didn’t fry out on you ages ago.”

Rocket didn’t like admitting that Tony Stark was right no matter how good he was feeling, so Rocket gave the device a cursory glance, did his best to hide the thrill of fear he felt (because yes it was a miracle that the thing hadn’t killed him sooner), and then set it aside and asked the pirate-angel, “You here to tell us the gauntlet’s ready?” 

“That I am. Vision is waiting upstairs.”

“Upstairs we go then,” Rocket said, pushing himself off of the table and landing with a wince. He hadn’t expected the soles of his feet to complain about the concrete floor. Ouch.

At least the upstairs lounge had carpet. It also had a discouragingly somber Vision. The dude’s frown was memorable; it was like his gunmetal gray complexion was taking him over, muscle group by muscle group. There were no smiles from Wong or Hamir, who were both standing behind a large, gauntlet-containing case resting on the tabletop.

Rocket waved to Carol Danvers (probably just arrived) and took a seat. For the occasion, everyone had made the effort to show up and -- surprise, surprise -- Gamora hadn’t pried Banner out of the Hulkbuster and eaten him. He did look a little bruised, though.

_Better him than me._

Nebula refused a seat and leaned against the wall.

Clint had accepted a chair but pushed it back from the table, his elbows propped up on his knees as he stared hard at the case.

Steve and Natasha and Rhodey were pretty much the only ones who looked like they were anticipating an official briefing and appreciable productivity.

Pepper accepted the hand that Stark reached out to her and Rocket tried not to hope too hard that whatever obstacle that was preventing beaming grins of accomplishment from the sorcerer dream team over there was something they could handle.

Had to be. It just had to be do-able. There was no other option for Rocket. 

Once everyone was settled, Vision took a deep breath. He placed a hand on the case.

“The procedure was successful, but there is a catch.”

 _Of course there is!_ Rocket snarled, gripping the edge of the Avengers’ official-and-trademarked meeting table between both paws, claws flexing.

Nebula asked, “And that would be?”

“The Soul Stone,” Vision said and Gamora’s hands fisted. Seeing her reaction, he continued, “It is not like the others.”

“The one before,” she grated out slowly and then paused for a deep breath, “it required a sacrifice. A death that cannot be undone. A soul for a soul.”

“Then, we must assume that this one behaves similarly.”

Natasha looked wary but confident that this development couldn’t possibly be as bad as it sounded. “In what way?”

Wong explained, “This stone has not received a sacrifice in exchange for its service. It is prudent to assume that it will demand payment upon use.”

Rhodey braced himself. “So what does that mean?”

“It is highly likely,” Vision told them, “that we will be able to use the gauntlet to resurrect those who vanished in the Snap. However, the individual who does this may do so at the cost of their own life.”

Pepper closed her eyes and brought her other hand up, covering and clamping tightly around her and Stark’s clasped fingers. “Oh, my God.”

Rocket shrugged. “What’s the big deal? Ain’t we got anyone we can spare? Some humie no one’s gonna miss?”

Clint’s brows arched. “Some bottom-feeder from the cesspool of humanity, you mean?”

“Sure. That’ll do.”

“Setting aside the fact that that would be immoral,” Rhodey unhappily objected, “what guarantee would we have that someone like that wouldn’t just wish us all dead with him? Out of spite?”

Rocket snorted. “I wasn’t actually suggesting that we tell ‘im the gauntlet is gonna kill ‘im.”

“Then what would we tell him?” Rhodey challenged. “That it’ll make him rich beyond his wildest dreams? That’s gonna be his one wish right there done with us back where we started.”

Stark proposed, “Here’s an idea. The United Nations -- some of them are still around -- we drop this mess in their lap for a change.”

Natasha pointed out, “They’ve got their hands full just trying to help their home countries muddle through this crisis.”

Steve stood. “It has to be one of us. We fought. We failed. This is our responsibility.” He looked around the table. “Volunteers only. Think about it for forty-eight hours. Get your affairs in order if they aren’t already.”

Rocket gaped.

Natasha said, “I’m fine with twenty-four hours.”

Banner looked pained -- even more so now than he had before the meeting had started.

“No,” Clint told her. “No, if I couldn’t go on the hunt then you can’t be a martyr, Nat.”

Her lips twisted into a sad smirk. “Like you didn’t hunt down your fair share in space.”

“Only when they were attacking us! Back me up here, guys!” He flung his arms out to Gamora, Rocket, and (of all people) Nebula, who confirmed, “You did not kill without provocation.”

“See? Fair’s fair, Nat.”

Banner shifted forward in his seat. “The Infinity Stones emit gamma radiation. And, well, that’s the Hulk. Maybe I could do it and survive.”

“As the Hulk, though,” Rhodey clarified.

Steve openly doubted Banner: “He’s mentally sound enough to wish for the result we need?” Of course, the answer to that was a big, fat HELL NO. Rocket had seen the footage from the attack on New York some years ago. The Hulk had two concurrent settings: roar and smash. “I’m sorry, Banner.”

“No,” the man replied, standing. His fisted hands were shaking with sudden fury although his face didn’t show an ounce of anger. “I’m the one who is sorry.”

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.

Biting her lip, Natasha looked away toward the window.

Rocket shook his head. “This is it, then. Really? One of us has gotta DIE!?” He shoved his chair back, swiveling toward Stark and standing up on the seat. “You asshole! Why’d you have to gimme fifty frickin’ years that I ain’t gonna need!”

“What are you talking about? We’re gonna get them back--”

“Are we really? Let’s think about this for a second here -- no.” Rocket slammed both fists on the back of his chair. “No, it’s NOT gonna happen. You know why?” And God how Rocket hated himself for what he was about to say, but he had to say it because he owed it to his mate: “Because BUCKY WOULD NEVER AGREE TO PAY THIS PRICE.”

“This isn’t just about Bucky,” Gamora tersely insisted. “Or you. Or me. It’s about fixing the universe. Putting things right. We have to, Rocket. We don’t have a choice.”

Vision said specifically to Steve, “But Rocket is not wrong: we don’t trade lives.”

“I wish there were another option.” He asked Wong and Hamir, “Is there anything to suggest a way around paying the Soul Stone’s price? What about before on Vormir? Daniel Drumm fooled it.”

Wong considered that for a moment. “If Master Drumm were to possess another and then wield the gauntlet, you mean?”

The assembly was silent.

“Under normal circumstances, such an act would be considered a crime punishable by the loss of a sorcerer’s privilege to wield magic. But these are not normal circumstances. I will ask him to comment on this matter,” Wong promised and then he sling-ringed himself to what looked like Kamar-Taj.

Hamir remained behind with Vision, perhaps to guard the gauntlet. Rocket didn’t know. Didn’t wanna know. He left.

Rocket walked away because this was that d’ast planet of Ego’s all over again and Yondu was telling Rocket: _“You got to gimme this.”_

This: a life for a life.

And Rocket couldn’t stand to be in the same room with these people -- allies and friends -- knowing that, this time tomorrow, one of them was probably gonna die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> putting coffee grounds in the garbage disposal: This is from Captain America: Civil War. (I suspect that it was Steve doing it.)
> 
> Also, I have a clear memory of seeing a baby teether ring like the one Tony gives Rocket, but alas, an Internet search spat out zero similar products. (Weird.) There are some in existence, but not like what I had in mind, so I have no helpful image link of a tiger chew toy for babies to share with you. Sorry.
> 
> In the five years between Thanos' death and the Time Heist in Endgame, Bruce makes peace with his inner demons and fully embraces the Hulk alter ego. When he uses the gauntlet to undo the Snap, he isn't affected by the gamma radiation. Here in this fic, Bruce has not made that transition BUT even if he had, using the gauntlet would still kill him -- not because of the radiation but because of the price demanded by the Soul Stone. Even if Bruce could become the Hulk at will (and in Infinity War, he can't) AND even if the Hulk could successfully focus well enough to wish for a reverse Snap, there would still be the issue of paying the Soul Stone's price to address.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This is a heavy-sad chapter. You may want tissues and privacy.
> 
> Music rec: "Long Highway" by The Jezabels

He pushed open the door to Bucky’s old room aboard the _Milano._

_The bunk where it all began._

These were not the circumstances in which he’d imagined daring to venture back in here -- not even close -- but Rocket needed this. He needed Bucky. Because Bucky would understand the despicable feeling of helplessness that Rocket was on the verge of drowning in.

And if Rocket was gonna fill up his lungs with something, then let it be this: he shut the door quickly behind him, leaned against it, and inhaled deep. Tears leaked out past his shut eyelids but he didn’t fight them. He tilted his head back and just let it happen.

The scent of his mate and himself -- here, together -- oh God how had he survived day-cycle after day-cycle without this? The past weeks in space had turned him freeze-dried, parched, and sun-bleached; its endless vacuum had sucked the warmth right out of him until he was just an empty husk, but now? Now, he could remember what it had felt like to be alive and loved and happy.

Contentment shouldn’t come at such a high price. Rocket didn’t know much about the soul, but he did know that.

He dived for the bunk and burrowed carefully under the covers, loathe to lose even one molecule to dispersion. He curled up in a ball and snuffled here, here, here until the aroma went stale and he had to search for another source. He mined those sheets and blankets like a prospector searching for gold.

Eventually, he slept.

And eventually, he woke. Slouched into the bathroom.

Rocket pissed and brushed his fangs and by then he was sure that the soft and distant sussurus he was hearing was the sound of someone else on board. Girding his loins for a face-to-face with Gamora (which was the most patience-taxing worst-case scenario Rocket could think of), Rocket scaled the ladder and peered into the galley.

Steve Rogers was sitting (well, more like sprawling given how stupidly long that humie’s legs were) at the table. Scribbling or sketching. He paused, glanced over at Rocket, and then went right back to what he’d been doing.

It wasn’t an attempt at unwelcome conversation, so Rocket jogged over to the food prep area. “Java?” he offered.

_Thunk!_

“I’ll share this if you’d rather something stronger.”

Glancing over, Rocket saw a half empty bottle of something that looked like whiskey, scotch, or bourbon (Rocket still wasn’t entirely clear on what the difference was) and a pair of glasses. One had a single swallow of liquor sitting in the bottom. The other glass looked like it was up for grabs.

Rocket grabbed it. “Fill ‘er up, Rogers.”

“Finally got tired of calling me names, huh?” he mused as he poured.

“I did just call you a name. Yours.”

He sat the bottle down and picked up his glass. Rocket put off his first sip and mimicked the gesture.

“The best is yet to come,” Rogers offered for a toast.

Rocket mused, “On the off-chance that fate’s sick sense of humor is taking the night off, yeah, I’ll drink to that.”

Glass clinked. Rocket sipped. Rogers tapped the pen in his hand against what looked like a stack of mutilated napkins.

“Whatcha got goin’ on there?” Rocket asked to fill up the silence.

“To Do list.”

Rocket’s face pinched. He stuck his nose in his cup because the fumes helped burn away the bitter reminder: tomorrow was the last day for somebody. And of course Captain America was gonna be one of the volunteers.

“Drumm come through?” Rocket checked, his hopes at rock-bottom low.

Rogers shrugged one shoulder. “Refuses to get involved this time.”

“Hm,” Rocket grunted. Unsurprised and officially depressed now. It wasn’t like Rocket had actually thought that their luck might change or anything. “Ain’t y’all havin’ a party or somethin’ tonight? Some send-off shit?”

“Already had it. Party’s over. You missed everything.”

“Did the pirate-angel fall flat on his face or kiss Nebula?”

“Uh, no. I am pretty sure neither of those things happened.”

“Then I didn’t miss much.”

Rogers chuckled.

It reminded Rocket of Bucky.

He exhaled slowly, trying not to let the burning in his eyes turn into anything that could end up being used against him.

Rogers checked his watch. “Couple hours yet ‘til dawn.”

“Got big plans for the day, huh?”

“Thought I’d go for a drive down memory lane. Wanna come along?”

“Ain’t your old neighborhood a big, brown crater right now?”

“Not that kind of lane.”

Since Rocket’s other option was to hang around here avoiding people, he agreed. “You got a ride?”

He did. Well, Stark did -- because he had lots of four-wheeled rides -- and Rogers borrowed one. Without asking.

“I am so proud of you right now,” Rocket enthused, angling his face toward the open window of the sporty sports car to inhale the scent of dew blowing in off of the roadside foliage.

“For what?”

“You stole Stark’s car. One of his cars. Dude’s got too many cars, so I guess you’re doing him a favor by making some room in that hangar, but still. This is a good start. We gonna sell it?”

“Nope.”

“Wreck it? Because that could be fun.”

“Nope.”

“You’d steal a car just to drive it? OK. Now we’re back on familiar territory with me being disappointed again.”

“Are you and Tony actually friends?”

“Yeah, sure. Sometimes. ‘Geek rivals,’ I think, is what Bucky calls it.”

“I can see that.” Rogers nodded, keeping his eyes on the road and the needle of the most prominent gauge just under the posted speed limit.

“You got any sense of adventure in ya or is that part of your Cap costume?”

“It’s definitely the costume.”

Rocket angled his sneer toward the scenery. “So you’re normally this repressed. I guess that figures. Bucky told me y’all grew up in a time where men had only one option: women.”

Rogers grunted out a laugh, amused. “Basically, that’s what human men tend to go for. But yeah, times are different now.”

“You ain’t.”

“Nope. And if I haven’t changed by now, I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

“You’re kinda boring. I mean, if nobody’s told you that before, you oughta know.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

“Don’t mention it. Or, you could express your appreciation but putting a little acceleration on.”

Rogers cocked his head to the side. “I think you’re gonna like highway.”

Yes, indeedy, Rocket did. He definitely preferred it to the scenic country roads. The sprawling city they got dumped out into was less of a thrill. Majestic and pompous piles of stone and mortar just blocks away from houses that looked like they’d been made outta cardboard takeout boxes.

“We’re the first ones here,” Rogers observed as he parked the car in a vacant lot.

“Where is ‘here?’”

Rogers pointed to a particularly ostentatious building. “The Smithsonian Museum.”

“And what’s in there?”

“Memory lane.”

Rocket harrumphed. “Of course it’d be in a place like this. Wait. Are we breaking in?”

“Actually, I’m smuggling you in,” Rogers said as he pulled a zippered jacket from the back seat of the car.

“You’re doin’ what now?”

“It’s either that or we spend thirty minutes arguing with security before we get banned and have to sneak our way in through the service entrance.”

“That sounds like a lot more fun, actually.”

“In the interest of time, can we please give smuggling a try first?”

Rocket warbled out a whimper, glaring at the jacket he was gonna be riding in. “You are at least buying me lunch in exchange for this indignity, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

So Rocket let Captain America zip him up in the belly of a musty-smelling windbreaker. Through the tiny triangle of open collar above, Rocket watched Steve tug an old baseball cap low over his eyes. Building security didn’t give a big, bearded guy with a beer belly a second look. The receptionist at the welcome counter was equally unimpressed, which made Rocket feel a little bit better: he wasn’t the only one getting smuggled in.

However, after too many turns and stairs and footsteps in general, Rocket complained: “Are we frickin’ there yet? Not that your smell makes me wanna yark, but it’s starting to give me a headache.”

“Twenty more paces.”

Rocket counted them off. And then Steve was crouching down and the zipper was lowering and Rocket was trying to keep his fur from getting torn out. Humie clothes fastenings as a method of torture. Who knew.

“Welcome to the Howling Commandos exhibit.”

Landing on the shiny, waxed floor, Rocket grunted absently as he tried to comb out the worst of the static charge fluffing up his pelt. Deciding that what little progress he’d made was as good as he was gonna get, Rocket looked up and surveyed his surroundings. “All this old stuff is from that war or whatever?”

“World War II, yes.”

Rocket let himself take a deep, cleansing breath. It looked and smelled like they were the only ones in the vicinity. “Y’know, when I keep a bunch of old stuff, Quill calls it junk.”

“This old stuff is called ‘history.’”

“Oh. Huh. That’s what that is.” He strode past a large panel with a grainy photo of a couple of dudes he’d never seen before. “Well, I’m calling my stash ‘history’ from now on.”

He waltzed up to Steve and looked at the photo that had caught his attention. “Man, somebody get this dude some cake.” He was so skinny it was painful to look at him.

“That was me,” Steve said. “Before the serum.”

“No shit?”

“Nope.”

Rocket skipped over to the next display and pointed. “Ain’t this your gal?”

“Peggy. Agent Margaret Carter. That is her.”

Rocket squinted. “She used to be taller than you, didn’t she?”

Steve laughed, nodding.

“Bet she was pissed to have to give that up. I would be.” Rocket spun around--

And stared hard at a face he knew. The photo was blown up to the point of being grainy in a way that Rocket did not find artistic, but the guy in it was familiar. Rocket’s gaze skimmed up to the caption and read:

_James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes_

For a moment, Rocket was flabbergasted. Shocked.

And then he got mad. So angry that steam boiled and burbled inside his skull.

But after a second or two, he calmed down. Because Steve and Bucky had grown up together, fought in the same war together. Steve’s “memory lane” was Bucky’s, too. Of course. Rocket should have seen this coming.

What he really wasn’t prepared for was--“He was so young,” Rocket crooned, lifting a paw to the surface of the panel and touching a clean-shaven cheek. The crease in his mate’s chin, hidden by a beard for the past two years, was front and center here. Short, tousled hair skimmed his brow. He stared back with dark, moody eyes and an upturned collar.

“What a punk,” Rocket lovingly decreed and Steve laughed out loud. The sound echoed before he managed to tone it down.

“Call him that to his face sometime. Priceless.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“Because that was what he was always calling me.”

“And what’d you call him?”

“A jerk.”

“Was he?”

“Not always. But kinda.” Steve moved away and let Rocket read Bucky’s official story. There were things that hadn’t been in his file and there were things that Bucky had never said. Rocket hadn’t known he’d been an overachiever. Although, given how solidly prepared Bucky usually was no matter what, yeah, maybe he should’ve guessed that one.

Next, Rocket got to see a video in a small theater. News reels and interview blurbs spliced together into twelve minutes of chaos. Most of it was all Cap-Cap-Cap and Steve looked a little embarrassed to be watching it alongside Rocket, but Rocket was in it for the brief clips of Bucky. Here and there, randomly interspersed, so he couldn’t blink at all for the whole duration.

Back out in the hall, on a dias beneath a huge, heroic portrait of the mighty Steve Rogers, Rocket found a faceless mannequin modeling Bucky’s old gear and commando clothes. But of course they didn’t smell like him. The Bucky-mannequin stood on Captain America’s right with the rest of the team fanned out and it made Rocket’s chest ache because Bucky was always on the right of someone. Everyone. Rocket. Quill. Gamora. Mantis. Drax. Groot.

Bucky, the right-hand man. And just plain _right._

There was a display case showing Bucky’s letters home (Rocket hadn’t had the chance to see much of Bucky’s handwriting what with there being almost no paper or ink in space), another with his personal belongings (the straight razor looked interestingly dangerous and he kinda wanted to see how Bucky had used it… except a demonstration would mean less beard and right there Rocket noped), and finally Rocket got a look at Bucky’s guns.

“Those aren’t really his,” Steve said when Rocket insisted on stealing them because, damnit, they were _Bucky’s._ “They’re just replicas.”

“Where’re the real ones at then?”

“Probably at the bottom of the ravine he didn’t die in.”

“...oh. Well, I guess we’ll see about picking those up some other time.” In the moment of quiet that followed, Rocket’s ears twitched. “Incoming. Big group ‘o those noisy, smelly mini-humies.”

“Kids,” Steve corrected him. “Time’s up.”

He knelt down, readying his too-large jacket for zippering. Static cling, the sequel. Rocket sighed in resignation before he let himself have one last look at the Bucky in the nearest photo -- his mate was smiling, laughing at something Steve was saying and the way his eyes crinkled and his teeth shone, yeah. Totally familiar.

And distracting to the point that Rocket almost didn’t notice when Steve paused at Peggy’s photo one more time on the way out and dawdled.

But when he did notice, Rocket didn’t complain.

“What do you want for lunch?” Steve asked when they got back to the car and Rocket hauled himself into the shotgun seat for another grooming session. (Maybe he could manage to cover the upholstery with shed fur.) Steve offered: “I’m buying.”

“The only humie food I know the name of is pizza.”

Steve grinned. “If you only know one, then that’s the one to know.”

They got takeout pizza and ate in the car. Rocket couldn’t wait to inform Stark. It was too bad the toppings were so damn good, otherwise Rocket would have tucked a slice of pepperoni under the floor mat for fun. And bragging rights.

He snuck a saucy slice of mushroom into the glove box instead.

“Tony’s never gonna let you back in any of his cars,” Steve warned but did not even try to order Rocket to clean up the mess. In fact, he was smirking his white-humie-boy butt off.

Rocket scoffed. “I got a spaceship. Like any of these prehistoric carts can compare.”

“Them’s fightin’ words.”

“The wheel,” Rocket continued. “That ain’t anything new. Not even when it’s made outta rubber and you put four of ‘em together. Big whoop. But a hyper drive? Now we’re talkin’.”

“Tell me about hyper drives,” Steve invited as he pulled out on to the street.

Rocket cackled. “Oh, boy. Twenty units says I can make your head explode before we get back to Manly Manor of Manhood.”

“Don’t make my head explode while I’m driving. Twenty units says you can’t make me cry ‘uncle.’”

“Wimpy-ass bet,” Rocket sourpussed, “but I’ll take those twenty units all the same.” And then he started talking.

And kept on talking.

He was still talking when they pulled up the drive to the Avengers compound.

“And now,” Rocket declared with panache, “I will pause for questions.”

“Question: is Tony impressed with this lecture?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I only caught about half of it.”

“Figures. Why’d I waste my breath?”

“But the half that I did catch sounded pretty interesting.”

“Bah,” Rocket growled, unconvinced.

“Second question.”

“Make it a good one or I’m stuffing you in the glove box.”

“You really wanna go in yet?”

“I don’t plan on going in at all.”

“Works for me.”

Rocket blinked as Steve both parked and vacated the car in one smooth move. Rocket jumped into the driver’s seat and asked through the open window, “Don’t you gotta be up there to draw stiffs or somethin’?”

“Do you really think they’ll start without me?” He actually looked mildly concerned as he collected his jacket and baseball cap from the backseat.

“Unlikely,” Rocket admitted.

“Pop the trunk.”

Rocket found the lever and yanked it so that Steve could retrieve one of the many bags _and bags_ of shit he’d bought at the Smithsonian gift shop. 

They ended up outside the _Milano,_ sitting their butts on Thor’s more recent Bifrost graffiti and leaning back against the landing stabilizers. It was’t sunset yet, not even close, but Steve promised it would be a good one. He opened the shopping bag -- made from recycled plastics! ...well, yippee -- and handed Rocket a slender volume.

“You bought a book about yourself? Explain how that is not tacky.”

“It’s not about me -- it says ‘The Howling Commandos’ right on the cover.”

“Uh-huh. What’s it doing in my lap?”

“Take it into space when you guys head back out. C’mon -- I’ll get a kick out of it.”

“So long as it’s a kick in the pants. Sure. Whatever.” Rocket pried open the stiff cover and smiled back at the grinning young Buck in the group photo.

Damn. It was hard for Rocket to believe that, after this photo had been taken, their paths would eventually cross. Fate would separate Bucky from his comrades here and launch him Rocket’s way something like half a dozen Terran decades later.

It almost felt like a gift.

“Funny how it all works, innit?” he mused to Steve without looking up.

Rocket turned the page and grinned helplessly at a candid of Bucky in a sleeveless shirt, suspenders dangling from the waist of his pants. Half of his face was covered in some kind of foam, that straight razor in one hand and gun in the other as he rolled his eyes at the photographer.

“You take this one?” Rocket guessed before he bothered scanning the tiny print of the caption. And, yup: _Photo taken by Steve Rogers -- “This is what you get when you try to sneak up on Bucky Barnes.”_

“Good to know.” Rocket pinched the corner of the page before he realized that Steve hadn’t answered his questions and was actually making Rocket talk to himself. _Asshole._ “Hey. What’s the deal, man?”

And that was when he noticed the building tension in the air. Molecules crowding together, vibrating, pressing in on his ears. Rocket’s gaze shifted from the page to his own arm -- he was bristling, each and every hair follicle tightening until his fur was standing on end.

Rocket looked up.

_SNAP!_

Sharp and metallic -- and then a _zing!_ like a stretched-taut docking cable snapping under centrifugal force that made him cringe and grit his teeth as the soundwave shoved its way right through his body.

Just like when Thanos had used the gauntlet before.

“Yo!” Pulse racing, Rocket leaped to his feet.

Steve’s head was tilted back against the ship’s hull, eyes open, staring up at the sky.

Rocket grabbed his bicep. “Captain frickin’ America, do you read me?”

No response.

“Steve?” Rocket gripped harder and shook him.

The jacket still bunched over Steve’s left forearm and the baseball cap covering his fist slouched to the ground and Rocket blinked at the metal glove on his hand. The gauntlet -- the one that Stark had just made, the one that could and would give you anything you desired, but refused to let you stick around long enough to enjoy it. (What a frickin’ rip-off.) But what was Steve doing with it and what the hell was wrong with him and--

“Son of a bitch,” Rocket bit out.

Reluctantly, he reached out and pressed the pads of his fingers to Steve’s neck, right where he knew Bucky’s pulse was.

He felt nothing.

Rocket lowered his paw to the man’s chest. No heartbeat. No breath.

He sighed out a sob.

Drew a deep breath.

And then he headed indoors. It looked like it was up to Rocket to break the news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken liberties with the Howling Commandos exhibit. Just FYI so you're not confused as to why the arrangement of the artifacts may not jive with what we see in the movie.
> 
> Steve doesn't use the gauntlet to go back in time to before the Snap and kill Thanos because (I am pretty sure) that would just create another time line instead of fixing the one they're all in right now.
> 
> Side note: no time travel means Steve doesn't hang around in the past and get a lifetime with Peggy but, to tell you the truth, I cannot reconcile that decision with what we know about Steve. I mean, I just can't see him staying out of history's way for the sake of domestic bliss. For sure, he's going to use what he knows of coming events to try and make the world a better place. He wouldn't be the man that Peggy fell in love with if he didn't. So yeah, I have some thoughts about how Steve (selfishly??) shapes the alternate time line that is implied in Endgame. Perhaps I will fic up something about that someday. (Unrelated to this fic series, obviously. It would be a new arc for Bucky because like hell Steve's not going to get him away from Hydra hella sooner, but also it'd be a new way for Bucky and Rocket to meet, so I ask all for that!)

**Author's Note:**

> Bucket friends!! As always, it would be a pleasure and the HIGHLIGHT OF MY DAY to hear from you! (^_^)
> 
> However, if commenting on AO3 isn't really your jam but you're keen to throw a private message my way, stop by my blog on Dreamwidth @ manniness.dreamwidth.org
> 
> Comments give me LIFE. It's true. (^_~)


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